Chapel and Priest: Husks
by Spockchick
Summary: Noir-Trek: Chapel & McCoy run a branch of Starfleet Intelligence on the rainy space-port of New Glasgow. Is the corrupt Mayor Khan behind the disappearance of sixteen individuals? Charlene/Scotty, Uhura/Spock, Gaila/Kirk/OFC, Chekov, Chapel/McCoy.
1. Chapter 1

**Characters/Pairings****: **UST Chapel/McCoy, Gaila/OFC/Kirk, Masters/Scotty, UST Uhura/Spock.

**Warnings****: **Rights abuse, murder, violence, torture, language, abuse of canon, Harry Mudd.

**Betas****: **The awesome Spocklikescats and TeaOli but I tweak so errors are all my own.

**Fanmix**: Fantastic Fanmix (little circles in url are dots): i-am-32-flavors◦livejournal◦com/5839◦html

**Art**: Awesome art, including Porthos, the beagle at: theoreticalfic◦livejournal◦com/20490◦html?view=76298#t76298

_**Summary**_**: **Noir-Trek AU; Chapel and McCoy run a branch of Starfleet Intelligence on the rough, rainy space-port planet of New Glasgow. Is the corrupt Mayor Khan behind the disappearance of sixteen individuals? A chain of events unwittingly started by Scotty leads them straight to Khan's facility, where they uncover a chilling abuse of rights. Fedoras, trench coats, Marcel waves, cloche hats, seamed stockings, garter belts, and cigarette holders.

**_A/N_:** Written for startrekbigbang◦livejournal◦com but polished up a lot and some changes made. Some lyrics from the fanmix are sprinkled among the chapters. Masters is played by **Janelle Monae**, Chapel by **Christina Applegate** and Crimson Crest by **Christina Hendricks. **All wisecrack lines are probably adapted from Raymond Chandler or Winston Churchill.

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><p><strong>Chapel and Priest<strong>

**~~ Husks ~~**

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honour, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it.

Raymond Chandler

It is the opinion of this house that it must be illegal for a civilian to procure, or be in possession of, a synthetically constructed biological body. As these so called bio-bodies, or _suits_, can be perpetually renewed, the prospect of immortality has now become reality. This will only serve to increase the divide between the rich, who can afford this new technology, and the poor, who cannot. Civilians currently inhabiting such bodies will not be permitted to renew them beyond the lifespan normal for their species. Federation-sponsored research may continue, for the purposes of peacekeeping and medical advancement.

Federation Legislature Vote, San Francisco, Stardate 2321.4

**One: Red Wind**

His credits were running out faster than green grass through a grey goose, and the baize of the table stretched out like a walk to the gallows.

His thumb hit the brim of his hat, pushing it back. "Fold."

He took his meagre winnings from a man whose face was ridden hard and taken in wet. They were enough for a cheap meal, and an expensive whiskey.

Out front, the bar was smoky, like the aftermath of a blaze; lights too dim, so that clandestine transactions continued, ensuring the loyalty of its clientèle.

A shot glass sat on the bar; the contents, but not the container, were what he ordered. Urbanites in this city thought all their booze should come with a drug-like kick. Perhaps if he had to live in this neighbourhood, he would think the same, but he wouldn't order good bourbon.

"Miss, can ya pour this in a decent glass?" The barmaid was hard as jade, and just as brittle. A ghost with skin like the olive in a Martini, all raven hair and rouged cheeks. A glittering, beaded collar choked her throat with a small but obvious padlock at its side, and he wondered if she had an owner. She shrugged, probably didn't get this request often, but reached anyway for a squat, wide glass and dumped the bourbon in. Finally, he could get his darned nose in and smell vanilla, tarred oak and burnt-black sugar.

"Thanks." No reaction; perhaps she was a submissive mute, only allowed to speak with her owner. Well, the upside was he could talk more than enough to order cheap chow, and good booze. A man on his own, on a dead-end case? He could talk the forelegs off an Edosian and make him hop back again.

In the corner a band shredded what was left of the tattered remains of a song. Somewhere, cats were throwing themselves from high windows, and being disappointed at their survival.

He talked, she cleared dishes. He talked, she poured. He talked, she wiped tables, until at last, the peacock people who only came to dives like this for some patronising authenticity before they hit a real fancy joint had left, and only a few barnacled lags remained. As she bent to stow polished tumblers behind the bar, he caught a glimpse of her well-upholstered hide in the mirror.

It was an ass to make an engineer kick a hole through a dilithium crystal housing.

The lags left as a wind picked up. Windows and shutters rattled, and the scrape of porch furniture skittering over the deck put his teeth on edge. The barmaid took up a straw broom to sweep up dry leaves blown in at the departure of her penultimate customer. Her dress was heavy red crepe, cut on the bias, contrasting with her skin like traffic lights. The swell and sway of her shape reminded him of ripe apples on a strong tree. He grasped his fedora – the wind would snatch it away from his head – and turned up the collar on his gabardine coat. Ready to go, he put the credits in an enamel plate on the bar, stood, and swept his hat past his torso with a tipped bow. Before he could leave, she flipped the broom and slid the stick through the door-pulls.

He swallowed, and looked into her eyes; burnt-oak, black and soft as soot.

Delicate as leaves in a spring breeze, her hands fluttered up, and they made a sign in standard.

s...t...a...y

~~intermission~~


	2. Chapter 2

**Two: Breakfast of Champions**

"Well, it's got me beat, Kid."

An older man and a youngster stood in front of a board, pinned with sixteen photographs. "Da, it is a puzzle."

"You know what these folks all have in common?" McCoy scrubbed at his five o'clock shadow and folded his arms. "Nothing, not a damned thing. I've been through every background check, every file, we talked to everyone who knew them, and their dogs, even the fleas on the dogs. Nada, zip, zilch. People don't just disappear here – well, at least not the legals."

"You want I shall do another check?"

"No son, something will float to the surface eventually. Things that stink usually do."

The bang of the frosted glass door told McCoy it had been opened by an ass. In ambled Christine, her long arms full of Padds, and a stylus teetering behind her ear. A short Chinese jacket with elaborate fastenings covered her top half and her magnificent behind was swathed in tight black satin. On her feet she wore black ankle-strapped suede platform sandals. McCoy loved those shoes, they gave the rear-view a pleasing sway. Today her hair was in loose ringlets; it almost made her look soft. Her armfuls of detritus hit the desktop and she stood, one fist at her cocked hip, jaw working her wad of gum. "You still staring at that board? Better watch it, you'll go cross-eyed."

"Then I wouldn't have to look at your mug when I'm talking, Slim."

"Yeah, well, it'd probably improve your face. When was the last time you shaved? You look like a bum." Her eyes roamed over his slack tie and stubbled chin.

"Hey," McCoy wiped the back of his hand on his cheek, "it was yesterday. You could shave me, bet you'd work up a nice lather."

Chapel shook her head. "Bones, if I was your wife I'd poison your coffee."

"Slim, if I was your husband, I'd drink it."

Chekov rolled his eyes. "When is our new communications operative coming?"

"She'll be here at ten-thirty. Wanna grab some breakfast, kid?" I can get a shave while I'm at it, if it'll keep my nursemaid here happy."

Chapel raised an eyebrow worthy of Spock himself. "Well, don't do anything I wouldn't do boys, and take Porthos, he needs some fresh air." A whine preceded the scrabble of claws on the parquet, and a stocky beagle emerged from under Christine's desk. Stretching, and shaking his head so his ears whirled, he padded over to Chekov and put a paw on the boy's boot, blinking in bright-eyed adoration.

The Russian knelt on one knee and proceeded to scrub the little dog's coat with his knuckles. "I know boy, it must be boring for you, listening to these old grumps. I bet you can't wait until Scotty is back." At the mention of Scotty, Porthos' tail thrashed, and he looked about for his master. "Let us go and eat boy, I get you some nice sausage." He took a lead from his pocket and clipped it onto the dog's collar.

.

.

It was a humid, dull morning and the air clung to them like a drunken date. When he was first posted here, McCoy couldn't stand it, now he barely tolerated the precipitation. Poor Spock struggled; his Vulcan physiology was ill-adapted to the climate. Chapel clucked over him (Spock brought out a rare chink in her armour) making tea and concocting potions that were illegal on several federation worlds. Of course, McCoy knew nothing about that, no sir-ee. The Vulcan took it with his customary stoicism. Never mind, only two years left in this dump, then an easy posting somewhere nice. Risa, now it had obliging inhabitants.

Overhead, black taxicabs conveyed folks in a hurry, giant polished insects weaving between the high buildings and disgorging their contents onto platform balconies at every level. Today, like many days, the sky was pearl-grey, wan light seeping through clouds. Silhouettes of ornate stonework and statuary broke into the scene. It reminded him of an Eastern European shadow puppet theatre he was taken to as a child. At six, it had looked crude, historic and frightening; at forty, he found the nacreous light disquieting, and days when the weak sun shone at this particular wavelength caused cold ripples over his hide. He pulled his collar a little higher.

Chekov was as cheerful as Porthos, wearing McCoy down with his constant questioning. By the time they got to the diner, his skull felt as if it was full of bees. They slid into a booth and hailed a waitress.

"Coffee, large, black. I want it to dissolve the spoon. Pancakes, bacon, syrup." McCoy barked his order. "The kid'll have hot chocolate and...?"

"Two fried eggs, bacon, pancakes, syrup, two waffles, sausage, hash browns and mushrooms. Oh, and toast." The Russian's face grew pink as he spoke to the waitress; she was attractive, in a girl-next-door way. "And two more sausages for the dog."

"He's seventeen – all that food won't even touch the sides." McCoy took off his hat and laid it on the window-ledge.

"Grumpy, your dad, isn't he?" The waitress giggled.

"Dad? I'm his boss, darlin'. You new here?" She had some chassis, built for comfort. Strange hair though; an elaborate do that must have taken an age to construct and looked like an upended basket. He didn't much care for it. In addition, her face had the look of a woman resigned to living a life of unrequited love, and he wondered if she practised flower arranging.

"I transferred from the branch across town." Her words stumbled a little, as if she'd heard his thoughts.

"Janice," McCoy read her name-tag, "Mornin' Janice."

"What line are you boys in?"

"Here you go," he fished in his suit pocket for a card, "that's us."

"Chapel & Priest; _Enterprise Detective Agency_. Wow, you're kidding, right?"

"Deadly serious doll. Call us if you need us. I hope you don't."

A stream of baby-talk aimed at Porthos was her answer. W_ho'salovelyboy_, repeated over and over in a rapid, high-pitched blabber as Porthos' tail slapped on the upholstered banquette. The boy and the beagle were magnets for young girls, middle-aged women, and grandmothers. Hell, any female with a pulse reacted with sudden and exaggerated animation. Often, this was useful on a case; Chekov was probably a Russian double-agent – KGB trained – since he could prise information from an oyster. Two sets of puppy-eyes trained on a vulnerable broad were enough to make the dam bust wide open. Sometimes, McCoy wondered if they were exploiting the boy. This morning, with his fogged head, he was in no mood.

"Coffee? A man could die of thirst here."

"Keep your hair on, granddad." The waitress bustled off, shoving her Padd into a uniform pocket.

Chekov's head lowered. "You better pray she does not spit in it."

.

.

Freshly shaved, and perked up by the injection of coffee and pancakes, McCoy bounded into the office.

Arms folded to support his chin, Chekov was slumped over his desk. Porthos lay beside him on the leather, head on paws, mirroring the posture.

"Come on boys, why the long faces?"

Chapel answered. "S - c – o – t – t – y called," she spelled his name, flicking her eyes to the dog, "he'll be back to pick up Porthos this afternoon. I don't know how they can allow dogs in the service hangars."

"He is the boss, they will allow him anything." The Russian's chin sank even further.

McCoy lifted off his hat and hung it on the coat stand. "It's probably not regulation, but Sc – the engineer sure seems to know his way around the rules."

"Hmm..." Chapel leaned back on her chair. "And of course, everyone here is straight as a die."

McCoy winked, "Straight as the seams on your stockings, doll – eh, Chekov?"

"Noooo, she is old enough to be my mama. I am not thinking of her stockings." Chekov took a hold of Porthos' far-side paw, and struggled to cover his eyes with it.

Christine glared in response, and gave her ringlets a pat from below with the flat of her hand. "I am not old enough to be your mama," she looked over at McCoy, "well, maybe in some parts of Mississippi. I don't know what Starfleet Intelligence was thinking, sending a teenager to this seedy space-dump."

"I am genius, that is why, and it is the most strategic space port in the galaxy." Porthos inclined his head, and licked his friend's ear in acknowledgement. "See? Even the dog agrees."

"Glad someone agrees with you, Kid," Chapel turned to her boss, "I let a friend sneak in before your ten-thirty interview. I put her in the good office; she's a lady."

"Well, that's a first 'round here, Slim."

.

.

When he entered the room, she didn't turn, which gave him the opportunity to observe. Purple wool crepe, in the form of a fitted jacket and skirt, clung to her form. He'd know that shape anywhere, it could KO a heavyweight champ from ten yards. The suit's shoulders were shrouded in a dark fur wrap, and a felt cloche hat topped off her look. When she turned towards him, he saw a scallop-shell of shining Marcel waves, the colour of a new penny, peeking out from its edge. On the floor, the scrape of her sole as she pivoted drew him to a high instep and slim green ankle. The pyramid shapes at the heels of her silk hose made arrows that merged into twin roads leading straight up to her rear, and my-oh-my was the drive worth it.

"You're not my new communications officer."

"You know I'm not, Bones." Indigo nails ran along the spines of books; fingers caressed the leather as if it were alive.

"Do you have information from Jim? I'm not sure you should be here, your cover could be compromised." McCoy's brow furrowed. She'd never come to the office before.

"I'm on a private matter, a friend... I was supposed to meet her last night. She didn't show, and she didn't come to work this morning." His visitor sat and crossed her legs, real slow. If Chekov was there, the whisper of silk slithering over a thigh, and the swish of warm satin beneath her skirt would put his not-quite-mature endocrine system on the fritz; it might even be terminal. That was why McCoy rarely took the teen to visit Jim; there was a lot of feminine susurration at JT's penthouse.

"You think this has something to do with the other disappearances?" He used the corner of the desk for a perch.

"I – I hope not," tears gathered at the corners of her eyes, "please, no Len, the others... are probably dead."

Never a man to resist a crying woman, he pulled a tissue from a box on the desk, passed it over and took her free hand. "Now, where's my happy girl?" To calm her, he patted the olive skin on the back of her hand, as he used to do with patients. "It's OK Red, tell your old uncle Leonard. From the beginning."

.

Fifteen minutes later, Gaila was gone and he sat, again in the good office, examining the resume of their new communications officer now sitting opposite. Unable to concentrate after the visit, his eyes kept drifting to the top drawer of his desk where another picture for the Missing Individuals Board lay, name of Devna. When Gaila gave him the photograph, he didn't let on he knew her friend. Now he knew her name, it made their dreamlike encounter a year back more real. Trying not to drift back to his motives for keeping silent, he tugged his mind back to the interviewee before him.

"Very impressive ma'am, you appear to be the best communications officer in the fleet."

"Why, thank you, Commander."

She was upright, a little too much; closed off, or was it contained? Time would tell. Wide-legged, high-waisted sailor pants were buttoned in twin rows at her hips and her black hair was tight in a ballerina ponytail that fell in a tarry drop over her right breast. The hair's tension looked painful to him; it was at odds with the fashions on New Glasgow, and he could see the ends beginning to frizz in the humidity.

"No ranks here – ever. The risk of using one outside is too great. Names only. I'm Bones, McCoy, Leonard or Sir. Nobody ever uses the last one – kids today got no respect. You go by…?"

"Uhura."

"Not Nyota?" His stylus rattled on the Padd; she was a tough nut. Pretty, but he liked his women with a little more cushion. "Seems a bit formal."

"That's how I like it, Com – , sorry, McCoy." Her lips pressed together for a second and he got the feeling she was impatient with him.

"Your last Captain's accident won't affect your work here, will it?" He asked this almost as an aside, still pretending to look at her credentials. Observing a narrowing of her shoulders, he tried another tack. "You joining SI in some misguided attempt at dirt-digging, to get revenge?"

Her up-tilted eyes narrowed; they were made up with wings of black, and her short nose and upright carriage reminded him of a Siamese cat. Something in those eyes made him wriggle in his chair and loosen his tie some more. "This is Starfleet Intelligence, in case you were wonderin', it's my job to know the background of my staff and to know if it will affect their work. And, for the record, I happen to like revenge-driven broads."

"It won't affect my work." Long, slim fingers brushed imaginary lint from her pants.

McCoy leaned into the comm and asked Chapel to process Uhura's hiring, then he reached inside his jacket and drew out a slim, silver cigarette case. "Smoke?"

"No, I don't, thanks."

"Well, you should. It's an ice breaker on a case. '_Got a light? Can I bum a cig?' _A conversation starter comes in handy." He withdrew a smoke and tapped the end on the lid of his case. "You can't just go up to someone and start yakking, you gotta find an angle. Smoking draws attention to the mouth, gives off sexual signals if you need to be persuasive. Something to do with your hands if you're nervous. Don't worry, they're harmless, not like some of the weed that half the population here smokes. Nasty stuff, grown on rooftops. Police turn a blind eye."

Getting into his stride, he opened his desk drawer, pulled out a pack of Old Navy and slid it over the desk. "Gotta blend in doll. Besides, these are a mild anti-fungal, keeps us from getting lung-rot in this damp atmosphere, it's not great on the human constitution. Doctor's orders."

She lit up and inhaled, holding the smoke. After a few beats she tipped her head back and blew three perfect smoke rings towards the opaque glass light-shade hanging over their heads. "What's a medical doctor doing running Starfleet Intelligence?" Bolder now her paperwork was going through.

"That's not all I do. I got a sideline, in righting wrongs. Medical wrongs, but that's not for this conversation." Damn right it wasn't, he liked to keep that part separated from his detective work. It made him feel grubby. "Now move along and speak to Chapel, she'll show you the ropes, and your apartment."

As she rose to leave, the door flew open and a black and white streak skidded in on smooth leather soles.

.

.

Starfleet's Intelligence chief at New Glasgow was not what Uhura expected. Although clean-shaven, he wore an air of dishevelment. His tie was just a little too loose, his shirt just a little too crumpled, and his hair, well his hair was just a lot too wayward.

As she rose to go speak to Chapel, the door flew open and a black and white streak skidded in on smooth leather soles. A boy in a neat black suit and tie plopped himself up onto the desk. Gleaming two-tone brogues dangled from slim ankles and he wore a trilby at a rakish stance, pulled over his forehead. It made it impossible to tell his age, but he was whippet-slim and small, about five-three.

Uncaring of the audience, he flung his arms about McCoy and planted a smacker on the doctor's cheek. At once, Uhura saw McCoy as a six-year-old, rubbing his face in disgust at the assault of an aged aunt.

"Charlie, get off me, you holy terror!" McCoy pulled his sleeve down over his hand and used it to wipe his face. Adding insult to injury, the boy ruffled McCoy's hair, compounding its state of disarray.

"Sorry Doc, missed ya when I was on vacation."

McCoy sighed and pulled off the boy's hat to reveal a young woman with large eyes, symmetrical features, silky, even-toned skin and wild hair scraped up into a high puff. Without its restraint, her hair bloomed outwards.

"Uhura, this is Charlene Masters. Special skills: explosives, sleight of hand, pickpocketing and annoying her boss. She'll never be short of a meal as long as she can fleece gullible marks at cards. We call her Charlie, or the Pocket-Rocket. Believe it or not, when she wears a dress she looks like a film star. We keep that side of her for special missions. Oh, and she's shacking up with our engineer, Scotty."

~~intermission~~


	3. Chapter 3

This is short, (as a few other chapters are) but I will try my very best to update daily to make up for brevity.

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><p><strong>Three: By the red stones of Brooklyn, I sat down and wept<strong>

Ash, red, green. Those were the colours of a Brooklyn day in the sun. Tenements shone, pavements radiated heat and street trees gave off diffuse emerald light. Why was the deep, blood sandstone glow described as a brownstone? It was no more brown than the sea was blue. Charlene knew the very lie of the stone, if it was with or against the grain. Blocks laid against the grain flaked, they were meticulously patched; fitting for grand old ladies of almost four hundred years. Each year, another carved lintel or stoop crumbled and a restoration team came to mend it, until spots here and there looked odd, new and too-crisp.

Streets like that were now museum pieces, originally with rents beyond imagination for those who'd grown up in the area, servants to the rich folks. From the last decade of the nineteenth century, and well into the twentieth, her ancestors lived there, worked for low pay, and had few rights. Then they moved away, and forty years later, returned in wealth. Flophouses were gentrified, the Navy Yard turned over to industry and the Eagle Warehouse, where Walt Whitman once worked, was converted into apartments. The family wealth lasted almost two centuries, until the money was lost and they were forced to leave for the final time.

When she cut herself, the blood was red as sandstone, and full of iron, as were the high railings upon the dwarf walls. The buildings were in her bones. No man understood; she'd asked a few on a visit. For them, it could have been the Neolithic and in some ways, it was – the stone age. They mocked the privileged rich people who lived there in the historic neighbourhood, but she didn't care. A wealthy person's theme park was better than a razed landscape, and the feel of rough, hot sandstone beneath the pads of her fingers was real. Too many synthetic surfaces passed beneath her hands.

Then, she met Scotty, an engineer to her explosives expert. Gossips told her his previous girlfriends were 'decorative', which made her nervous. Long ago, as a teenager, she'd decorated herself. But trouble followed by day and night, until she hid her beauty in boy's clothes, and could go about her business unheeded.

Montgomery Scott took one look at her ancestors' homes preserved in aspic and sat down on the steps of rusty stone, his eyes shining with tears. Terran history was not her strong suit, but she soon found out that Scotsmen were emotional, and Glasgow and Brooklyn were both made of rich, red stone. Weeks later, after watching her defuse a device with seconds to spare, her heart slowed by deep breathing, he kissed her, and she was relieved. One day, he would find out the truth and more than likely leave, but each day it became easier to pretend.

It wasn't her fault her parents lost all their money. Was it?

.

.

Chapel and Priest, or the_ Enterprise_ as the crew called it, was set in a large tenement, its apartments a convenient front for Starfleet Intelligence. Spock's concealed a science lab, Chekov's a navigational computer used to track comings and goings at the spaceport, and McCoy's, an operating theatre. Nurse Chapel had a lab, too, she was quite the chemist, with a pill for every ill; some you didn't even know you had.

When Charlie first started work in SI, she asked McCoy why they were disguised as a detective agency, and he replied the best hiding place was in plain sight. The agency had contacts everywhere, official and unofficial; they even had a plant in the New Glasgow police department, Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu. All kinds off stuff fell into his hands so that he was part cop, part 're-homer' of confiscated goods. They named him "The Fence'.

Now, as she descended the front steps of the brownstone in three jumps, she felt at home. Today, she had a small job to do.

~~intermission~~


	4. Chapter 4

**Warnings**: Very mild Scotty swearing, appearance of Harry Mudd in bad outfit.**  
><strong>

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><p><strong>Four: You've got to pick a pocket or two, boys<strong>

Scotty pulled his hat down against the drizzle. Apparently, it was a myth that the Inuit had a thousand words for snow, but he'd bet the inhabitants of New Glasgow had a thousand words for rain. Whoever named this planet had a sense of humour at least; it was just like Glasgow, back home in Scotland. On this small grey planet it rained for thirty-five percent of the year, half an inch in an afternoon was common. Pavements were permanently slick, but when the sun came out, it lifted the spirits, along with the veil of smog that floated in from surrounding mining operations. "So, what have we got today, Charlie?"

"Standard swipe: you bump into and apologise. _Hoots mon, I'm a wee Scottish laddie an' I'm awfy sorry!_ I'll rifle through their clothing." Charlie grinned with her mouth closed; the anticipation of a well-executed theft always got her pumped up.

"Ya rascal, I dinnae talk like that. Cheeky besom." He laughed, every time she smiled he wanted to pick her up in a hug. When he watched her defuse a bomb, he wanted to tell the planet, galaxy and universe that she was his girl. When it came to Charlie, he had his heart in his mouth, and on his sleeve all at once. "What does the Doc want?"

"An Orion's ID chip."

"Man or woman?"

"Man," said Charlie, "there's an Orion underground club on Renfield, a kinda specialist place, fetishists, submissives, bondage; that kind of stuff. He wants to sniff about there on a case."

"Oh Gorn, does this mean he'll be taking the tanning pills again? He's even worse on them. Like a bear with a sore heid." Unfortunately Scotty, Chapel and McCoy were the only crew-members who could sport a convincing Orion disguise. Chekov was too nervous and green, pardon the pun, and Charlene was too dark. The side-effects were grim, and caused the doc to exhibit levels of methane-fuelled surliness usually reserved for calls to his ex-wife. To date they hadn't been able to synthesise a make-up convincing enough to fool a real Orion, so the pills it was, in all their stomach-churning horror. "Aye, he'll need a cork."

There was a window of about a day, when you could stop taking the pills to allow your intestines to un-knot, and before the complexion started to fade. You got all your sneaking about done in that day.

Charlie and Scotty split up and milled around New Glasgow's main square, looking for a mark. Just like its namesake, the square had lions, and a classical central column Scotty always assumed supported a statue of someone called George. It was called George Square, after all. One day, after an evening dram, he called New Glasgow Tourist Information - amazed such an organisation existed - and asked who was at the top of the column. An incredulous silence followed, and after too many seconds, the operator answered, "It's Mayor Khan, sir." Oh right, my silly mistake, thought Scotty, of course it is. That's me told then.

About twenty yards away, he saw Charlie indicate a likely target by a nod of her head, and Scotty strode through the crowds, only to have his path blocked by a tall, fat man wearing a purple zoot suit with stripes so wide it could have been cut from the cloth of a fortune-teller's tent. Jewelled rings squeezed fat fingers that were occupied in smoothing out a moustache the size and shape of a small rodent. A purple velvet Homburg festooned with a green feather had an uncertain purchase upon his wide head.

"Mister Scott, de-_light_ed to make your acquaintance again. How is my favourite head of engineering at Clyde spaceport?"

Harry Mudd: a reporter who would sell an organ for a story. "Mudd, ye know I'm the only head of engineering there, and I'm in a hurry."

"Oh, dear boy, don't let me stop you. I just have a message for your neighbour, Detective McCoy. He does forget to call me and I've left so many messages for him. I know you have an apartment in the same building as his little agency. The _Herald_ _Enquirer _is very interested in an angle on these missing persons. No, please don't tell me he isn't on the case, he is on _every _case here, him and that funny little Russian boy." Mudd paused, in mock discovery of the striking of a sudden thought. "Oh, my dear, do you suppose they are," he affected a _sotto voce_, cupping his pudgy hand to shield his mouth, "_having an affair_?" The other hand rose and he clapped them together in childish delight, rising on his toes. "How simply divine."

A heavy sigh blew through Scotty's lips. "Mudd, GTF ye slimy git. You lot are scum, grubbing through people's rubbish and hacking into their comms. McCoy tells me he just got a new communications operative to hunt you down and put a stop to your shite. Now bugger off before my fist goes off by accident." Scotty forged on as Mudd shouted after him, "Well he knows where to find me, m'dear." Of course, the mark was gone, and Scotty and Charlie spent another hour in the rain before they got what they came for.

.

"Gorn, it's freezin' in here Charlie, I'll get the fire on." Back at their apartment, Scotty shook out his coat and hung his hat on a peg at the door. In the small kitchenette, Charlie made noises that meant a pot of tea was on its way and Scotty settled into their dumpy – and a bit lumpy – couch to read the news on a Padd.

"There's a picture here of Khan, the creep, at a party hosted by JT. Gaila's in the background. Canny believe the press still think she's his PA. She's lookin' good 'though."

"Scotty!" Censure came from behind.

"Och, ye'd have to be blind..." It was time Scotty stopped talking on that subject he thought.

A cup of tea appeared on the table at his elbow and Charlene's hand rested on his shoulder. "You want a slice of malt loaf?"

"Did you make it, love?"

"Of course I did."

"In that case, you bet." The Scotsman rubbed his hands together.

They sat squashed up on the couch and Charlie read the news with him, curled up like a cat. "Gaila was in the office the other day."

"Aye? That's no' like her." He put the Padd down and faced his partner.

"One of her friends has gone missing. She's frantic with worry. I talked to her this morning. I wish we could find a connection." She slid her elbow on to the arm rest and put her chin in her hand.

Scotty budged over and put an arm about her, kissing the top of her head. "Now, don't you be going out at night on yer own Charlie. I mean it. Not until this thing's cleared up." Thoughts of Charlene, taken away, kept him awake at night.

"It's not just women!" Her eyes hardened in a look Scotty knew as: _I may be small but I don't need any man telling me I can't look after myself! _"Can you turn the fire up? I'm still cold." A tartan blanket lay over the couch back and she pulled it about her shoulders.

"You look like a wee old Heilan' wifey. I can think of a better way to get warm, granny."

Charlie's small chin stuck forward in challenge. "Oh yeah? Show me what you got."

"Only if you promise to call me _Commander_."

"Aye _Commander_, show me what you got."

~~~intermission~~~

GTF: Scottish expression; abbreviated form of Get To F***


	5. Chapter 5

Thank you so much for all who have favourite-d this story, I am very grateful, and to all who have reviewed. This is some mild UST Spock/Uhura.

* * *

><p><strong>Five: Did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there?<strong>

"OK, you'll be in apartment six. Here's your Work ID and a door combination. Memorise that." Chapel passed Uhura a small brown wallet.

So, this was her story: _Nyota Penda Uhura. Communications Operative, New Glasgow Spaceport. _Her own impassive face looked out at her.

"Don't worry," Chapel said, "you'll only be there three days a week. It's a good place for keeping an ear to the ground. Only myself, McCoy and Chekov are officially employed by the agency. Scotty's chief engineer at the spaceport, Spock lectures a few hours a week in Quantum Mathematics at NGU and Charlie's a consulting academic in geology and explosives technology, with the silica mining operations."

It was easy to see how Charlie and Spock combined their workloads with SI, although Spock could easily handle two full jobs. "How does Scotty manage to work with us and the port?"

"Just the way he did when he used to work on a ship. He doubles his estimates for fixing things, which is still 20% faster than any other engineering crew. It gives him plenty spare time to work with us and they still think he's a miracle worker. Nobody at the port goes into the Chief Engineer's office in the afternoons. Not unless they want a rocket up their ass. That's when he does intelligence work. Sorry, did I say intelligence work? I meant his paperwork."

"But what does SI need with an engineer?"

"He's pretty good at hot-wiring shuttles and patching-up destroyed evidence, and he's a crack forger. Comes in handy here, especially when we need fake credentials. They're a great team, him and Charlie. She steals stuff and he 'adapts' it."

"So, what am I supposed to be doing with the rest of my time if I only work at the port two days?" Surely Uhura needed a cover for all of her hours?

Chapel smiled. "Well, we heard you have a great set of pipes. Anyone asks, you're trying to get work as a singer. This way, if someone tries to give you a gig, accept. It was the captain's idea, we get information from the most unlikely sources, just ask JT."

"Where is Kirk? I haven't heard much about him. I thought he's supposed to be our boss?" Uhura hadn't communicated with the captain at all.

"You don't know, huh?" Chapel ran her tongue over her teeth, beneath closed lips.

"No."

"Woo, it's a doozy. I'll leave it as a surprise. You'll find out what it is soon enough. I want to be there when it happens 'though, I wanna see your face."

Chapel left Uhura to unpack. The apartment was small, but comfortable, a circular walnut cabinet for Padds or books hung on one wall and two small red leather couches with black piping sat either side of a rug decorated with black lines and quarter-circles. A curtained recess at one end of the sitting room held a box bed, and a similar recess opposite was partitioned over to make a walk-in closet. Best of all was a green marble art deco fireplace holding holo-flames. In this strange planet of perpetual precipitation, a cosy, wintry apartment was fitting. The tiny kitchen and bathroom were quite adequate. She only needed a shower, and her mother taught her how to cook on just one burner. Here, she had two, more than enough for one person.

She responded to a knock on the door and thinking it was probably Chapel, shouted for them to come in without bothering to turn round. As soon as the person entered, she knew it was Spock because they didn't speak, just patiently waited for her to finish putting clothes into a small chest beside the bed. As she closed the final drawer, she counted to five and gripped the drawer pulls until her fingers throbbed.

"Mister Spock." She gave a brisk nod.

"Miss Uhura." He stood at the threshold, hesitating.

"Please come in, sir." He took a few paces inside and launched into a little speech.

"Welcome to the _Enterprise. _I am gratified by your posting. Here on New Glasgow we investigate many underhand activities. Your unmatched language skills are most welcome, and an extra ear at the spaceport is vital to us. I can think of no one better qualified."

Almost laughing at his formality – he really did speak like an Austen character – she replied, "It's good to see you, Spock. I'm sorry we couldn't work together here at _Enterprise _until now_._" And it was good to see him, not awkward or embarrassing. Perhaps, treading in the footsteps of her Vulcan instructor, she'd learned to submerge her feelings. It wasn't as if anything had happened between them, but seeing him again, in his pin-striped suit, waistcoat and snow-white shirt, brought a rush of blood to her head.

"You were, and still are, my best student. The _Farragut_, as the good doctor would say, was 'not fit to lace your boots'. I did attempt to have you re-assigned; Starfleet Intelligence, and the _Enterprise_ agency was your right. When apprised of the situation, Jim made attempts to secure your place."

"Thank you sir, that means a lot coming from you, and thanks for putting in a good word with the captain. It's nice to be back on solid ground."

"Privately, I believe Starfleet assigned you to the _Farragut_ in order to rectify a chaotic situation left by their previous head of communications. It was our loss. Your talents are better utilized here than up in space. I also believe it to be somewhat safer here."

He wanted her to be safe. She always clutched at his most neutral statements, probing their meaning in order to uncover any minute tipping in her favour.

"We almost lost Pike." Nyota closed her eyes and took a calming breath, trying to push the memory away. "I was monitoring his frequency. I heard him being tortured and there was nothing – " It was impossible to continue.

"Yes, I know, but I am confident in your professionalism." He stepped forward, just one step, and raised a tentative hand, but let it fall. Neither one spoke and she took time to reacquaint herself with his familiar stooped posture. The commander had served with Pike, rumour was Spock would follow him to the galactic barrier.

At last, the Vulcan punctured the silence. "He is a man of intelligence and integrity. He would not expect a crew member to carry out an order he could not execute himself."

"Poor choice of words, Spock. He almost did execute himself." Her eyelids drooped, "I had a very early start today, will you excuse me?"

"Of course; my apologies." At the point of reaching her door, he looked back, his hand on the frame. "Please believe me, I do appreciate you being here."

"I look forward to working with you once more sir."

Long after he left, she leant on the inside of the door, her hand touching where his had rested.

~~~intermission~~~


	6. Chapter 6

**Six: You've been taken by a smooth criminal**

As was customary, anyone who happened to be in the agency at lunchtime gathered in the good office to watch the one o'clock news – if you could call it news. Almost nobody could understand it, except for Charlie, who translated for the hard-of-mediaspeak. Her running commentary sparked off a flurry of barely-disguised expressions on Spock's face; alternate frustration, boredom and downright bewilderment.

"Look at that slime," Charlie tutted at the mayor of New Glasgow, "he's been 49 years old for the past five years. Rumour is he's almost 300 years old. Nobody can prove it."

Uhura turned to her colleague, "What? That seems unlikely, why do you think that?"

"It was in the _New Glasgow Herald Enquirer_. He's wearing a suit."

"Uh, he's wearing kind of a linen kurti and pants. The _Herald Enquirer_? Do you read that site?" Uhura was embarrassed by the faint tone of disdain in her voice, but Charlie was unperturbed.

Scotty burst into the conversation, "Site? Shite more like, a steamin' load of cack."

"Mister Scott, despite your crude scatological assessment, I must concur. It does, however, behoove us to study all aspects of planetary culture. As this concerns your own human culture, a more open-minded approach would be better fitting a Starfleet officer."

"Scotty, you've been Spocked! He just called you a snob." Doctor McCoy cackled as the Scotsman shook his head and Charlie tried to steer the conversation back to the mayor.

"Quit it guys, I'm trying to tell Uhura about Mayor Khan. He's wearing a suit, an artificially constructed bio-body; bioflesh."

"What? But they cost millions, serious millions. And they're illegal…aren't they?" Uhura was still feeling her way on this strange planet where normal Federation customs didn't always apply.

"Yeah, but with all his rackets, for 300 years? What does he care about illegal? It's a suit, that's what I think. And look at Marla; she got lucky. She's a disgrace to Starfleet." Charlie gestured towards the mayor's red-headed wife, a petite, pale woman who beamed out into the crowd gathered at whatever her husband was announcing, her smile beatific and smug; a political wife to the core. Uhura imagined her standing by her husband, the way they all did when scandal and lap-dancers struck. How could they not? Their whole lives revolved about their men.

"She came from Starfleet?" asked Uhura.

"Yeah, a historian. A histrionic if you ask me. Seems like a life of pampering and diamonds compared to Starfleet appealed to her tiny brain, stupid little girl."

"Indeed," said Spock, "she sports a decorative appearance sustained only by great wealth."

"Yeah," Charlie nodded, "her wardrobe cost more than this building." Charlene's dissection of the mayor continued with glee. "Look at his pecs – they're not real, they're either implants or he's all bioflesh." Indeed, the deep v of the mayor's shift displayed an impressive, hilly landscape of smooth brown chest.

"He looks all man to me," Christine drawled, winding one lanky leg tight over the other.

McCoy's head jerked round. "Christine! I'll have you taken outside and shot as a collaborator."

The nurse flipped a finger in reply. "Keep your pants on Bones, a girl can window shop. Just because she's admiring doesn't mean she'll buy the goods. Second thoughts, I'd take a night with him, as long as he was gagged." For a moment the nurse's eyes became unfocussed, "and bound; especially bound."

"What is our esteemed leader's announcement?" Spock craned forward to break free of the wall of giggling caused by Chapel's admiration of the mayor.

"Shush, you guys." Charlie flapped her hands.

Without doubt, Khan was an attractive specimen: his hair was thick and shiny, his muscles bullish and his posture upright. "... so from next month all surgical procedures under 500 credits will be free. Healthcare reform is a priority for this council. No citizen of New Glasgow will be disadvantaged by their income..."

A murmur of dissent followed in the office; Uhura didn't understand, "But that's good, isn't it?"

"No," Chekov said, "he has all the healthcare on the planet in his pocket – they do cheap deals. Most of the procedures under 500 credits are cosmetic surgery. People are lured in and get more and more done and then they are in debt so much they cannot pay. The company is a loan shark."

Spock continued: "Many of the non-humanoid species you will see in New Glasgow are in fact human – fetish augments who, after repeated surgeries, have transformed themselves entirely, on the outside at least. They are colloquially referred to as FAs."

"Aye lass, Mister Spock canny go tae Finnegan's bar without droves of girls with falsies makin' a bee-line for him." Charlene's eyes narrowed at her partner. "Eh, false ears I mean. I only have tae challenge them tae an arm-wrestle and we know they're no' real."

"Sorry," Uhura was confused, "how can you tell they have fake ears by their arms?"

"A real Vulcan lassie would beat me, wouldn't she?"

The newscaster switched to another story. "And in other news, the actress Crimson Crest returns fresh-faced after her vacation to Dunedin." A pillow-lipped redhead with curves usually only seen in geometry texts was ushered through a crowd by two monumental Klingon bodyguards. The surface of the crowd glittered with camera flashes.

"Fresh-faced my ass, she's been re-surfaced. She's about as fresh as a week-old catfish left out in the sun." McCoy grumbled some more under his breath. "Dunedin just happens to be the location of KhanCorp's most advanced surgical facility."

"Leave Crimson alone, Bones." Christine leapt to the actress' defence, "she's friends with Jim – she's OK."

Uhura felt even more in the dark. "What's re-surfacing?"

"You gotta learn the lingo here doll; re-surfacing's a skin transplant with lab-skin. They take a sample from between your ass-cheeks where the skin is least damaged, and grow you a whole new surface. Hereabouts, we call it ass-face."

A look of relish came over the Doc's visage, as Uhura felt her mouth stiffen in horror. "That's revolting, that and the FAs. Why haven't I heard about people doing this on Terra?"

"Regulations here under Khan are pretty lax. Most of these treatments haven't been passed by any Terran FDA," said Christine.

"But Starfleet should do something about that." Uhura was indignant, but everyone laughed.

Christine patted her on the arm. "Don't mind us, we're just rude, hardened old lags here. MediKhan are at the cutting edge of surgery. Why would Starfleet waste their precious R&D credits when MediKhan will do all their research for free? Thanks to Khan, Starfleet can create sleeper agents who aren't even the species their friends and family think they are, and they didn't pay a penny towards development."

"That's immoral." Uhura couldn't believe it.

"Aye," Scotty scratched his ear. "That's defence policy constrained by funding for ye, look to big business for innovation and turn a blind eye when the regulations are broke. And you know what they say, keep your friends close, and your enemies closer."

"Why wasn't any of this in my briefing?" Uhura asked.

Chekov tapped the side of his nose. "Need to know basis, not written in records. We are here to observe and report. Khan is allowed by Starfleet to operate, and he knows that, but they are becoming tired of him. The financial corruption is spreading. We play cat and mouse with him, but he is a genius, and very good at covering his tracks. One day, he will make a big mistake, and we are waiting."

The news over, Charlie flicked to a music feed. A blonde girl sang about robot love. She wore nice earrings; they were the only thing she wore. McCoy and Scotty leaned forward and Charlie changed the channel to some crooner's live concert. He was young and slim, wearing an evening suit with a crisp white shirt open at the neck, a black bow tie lying un-knotted about the collar. With a confident shimmy, he slid out of his jacket and threw it into the crowd, setting off a brief scuffle. The sound of screaming rose to ear-bursting decibels as he blew a kiss in the direction of the man who caught the jacket, then scrubbed at his scalp in a calculated move that made his hair stick up in a boyish, adorable manner.

_Adorable? _Had Uhura really thought that? Gorn, she was getting sucked in to the man's charm. It surrounded him like a vortex and shone from his cornflower-blue eyes. Beings of all sexes in the crowd were on the verge of hysteria. She was drawn to the monogram in twinkling lights, picked out rhinestone-fashion above the velvet black stage.

JT

Facing Christine, her eyes wide, Uhura asked, "This is our captain's cover? Is this a joke?"

"No joke, he's very popular with every sex and species, and he mingles in Khan's circle. All very convenient."

"But I hardly recognised him – I thought Kirk had hazel eyes, and this guy's hair seems thicker." Surely this was an elaborate joke at her expense. "I'll believe this when I see it." She folded her arms in defiance.

"All right doll," the doc butted in, "tomorrow we'll pay JT's penthouse a visit. We'll take Chekov, he always finds it enjoyable, if his heart can take it." McCoy elbowed the Kid in the ribs.

Chekov's face turned four shades of red.

~~~intermission~~~


	7. Chapter 7

**Seven: Let's misbehave**

Even the entrance hallway of JT's building dripped with opulence; polished-steel revolving doors three men high were framed with shining architraves of zigzag metal. Above them, the interior was lit by leaded glass panels that echoed the chevron patterns of the teak floor, so highly polished that if she looked down, a woman could see the lace of her underclothing. It had a cathedral's gilding and space, and McCoy could sit there all day on one of the plush couches, absorbing the peace. Stage right stood a lacquered walnut desk, styled as the dashboard of a million-credit shuttle-car. As usual, the buttoned up, Brylcreemed concierge regarded him with the expression of a man inhaling the whiff of disappointment.

"You again, sir. Do you have an appointment with Mister Tiberius today?"

"Nope, but I got one with his lovely assistant, Miss Gaila. I'm working a case for her. You can call her if you like. If you can remember the number of her apartment, Barty." That earned him a familiar stick-up-the-ass scowl.

"It is _Bartholomew_, sir." Barty made a show of calling Gaila. He played her the security feed from his station and asked twice to see Uhura's ID, even though he'd scrutinised it with his beady little bird eyes the first time.

McCoy hadn't the patience. "You sure that's quite necessary Barty? It's not like we never met before."

"Are you attempting to tell me my job, sir?" It was a marvel how Barty's eyebrows went up while he was still looking down his nose.

"Nope, just trying to figure out what it is."

Two minutes later they were in a turbolift decorated in bronze sunbursts, hurtling up to the seventy-seventh floor.

While the trio stood waiting for the doors to open, Bones grinned at Chekov, who rubbed his palms on his trousers. He had to hand it to Uhura today, she looked scary, in a most agreeable way. Her micro-braided hair was piled up in a French roll with a tiny, military-style pillbox perched on top. She'd given up on the straight style and cut about a foot off it. Everyone who lived in this damp place arrived at a manageable 'do' through trial-and-error. Her red suit was sprayed on with a fire-hose – the skirt so slim that when she sat, it almost showed her stocking-tops, but didn't – it was some trick. The jacket was a parody of a bell-hop uniform, but with a more pleasing frontage.

On the penthouse floor, the lift doors opened at half the speed of those on other levels. McCoy knew that because he'd timed them. Gaila always greeted visitors at these doors, and he'd long suspected she'd engineered them that way to stage a dramatic entrance. Of course, the level of drama was in inverse proportion to the size of her clothing. Bones thought of covering the Kid's eyes until he saw what she was wearing. With a 'ping', they reached their floor, and the doors crept apart, separating to reveal the green goddess in all her glory. At McCoy's shoulder, Chekov drew in a quiet gasp.

A violet satin dress wound round Gaila's curves, leaving her shoulders as bare as a lover who'd wrapped a bed sheet about her naked body, but no sheet ever got filled out that way. It was a miracle of twenty-third century engineering; a dress that threatened to spill its load at any moment, and what a load. Green for go, and red for danger. She was poured by a barman who didn't know when to stop.

Her hair flowed loose in a copper river, an artless curl covered one eye and a long black cigarette holder balanced between her fingers. Held away from her body, its smoke trail seemed to come from Gaila herself. When she spoke, McCoy felt it in his hip pocket.

"Well, Bones, you finally decided to have me show the Kid the ropes?"

"I swear, Gaila, if you were younger, I'd put you over my knee and spank you."

"You mean if you were younger, daddy_._" She moved off with a pendulum's swing. "Walk this way Doc."

"I can't. Don't have the equipment."

"Sorry Bones, did you leave your cane in the elevator?" She looked back at him over her shoulder and the exposed eye closed in a sly wink. He mimed groping about his collar to attach a leash.

All four sat on snowy leather couches that ensured Porthos wasn't allowed in JT's home. The lounge was twice the size of Bones' apartment, including his secret OR. Just like the huge captain's quarters on eighteenth century frigates, it reminded the crew who was boss.

Gaila offered around cigarettes. "So, when were you thinking of introducing me to your beautiful companion?" The Orion addressed Uhura, "Sorry, the old guy always gets a tad forgetful around me, I got no idea why."

"This is Uhura, Gaila. Best communications officer in the fleet, now you behave." He hoped she wouldn't, he liked it best when she misbehaved.

"Pleased to meet you Uhura, I like your look. It's always the quiet ones."

Not versed in female-speak, McCoy couldn't tell if that was honey or vinegar, so he got up and wandered about the room, and picked up a polished brass telescope from a ledge on his travels. Seafaring antiques were Jim's comfort blanket; in his heart he captained that frigate, and watched the stars from the quarterdeck.

New Glasgow stretched out beyond the tall iron-framed windows of the penthouse. Through the telescope, McCoy saw all kinds of transport. On the River Clyde, a hovercraft; above the water, a sleek mag-train on an iron bridge; in the air, taxicabs. If he had x-ray vision he would see the low-level trains beneath the ground, or the tiny subway that had only one circle line and was nicknamed the 'Clockwork Orange' on account of its colour.

Inside, the room they sat in was an iceberg-white of the kind designed for armies of maids. Either JT wanted to dazzle from all angles, or he got into a lot of brawls up here and hoped his opponents would go snow-blind. Perhaps he just wanted to admire the statuesque Orion who lounged here, her contrast turned up to max against the monochrome landscape. About four minutes ago, Chekov lost the power of speech, and as McCoy processed Gaila's greeting to Uhura, he knew how the Kid felt. Did she light the fuse of a bomb or a friendship?

He needn't have worried, Uhura was an expert in communication: "I find lovers adore an uptight up-do and a _lot_ of buttons. In the time it takes to unloose my bindings, I have a measure of their stamina. Except if they are old and rich, then I have to engage the services of my seamstress."

"What, the old guys tear them?" Gaila's voice lowered, as if to shield Chekov, who'd smoked almost an entire 'Old Navy' in one drag.

"No, I do. I'd rather they had the heart attack later, not sooner."

A peal of laughter escaped the Orion's lipsticked pout. "That's a line, but it's a funny one. I like you."

Steady brown eyes stared at Gaila."Good for you."

"Okay, ladies, enough of the lollygagging. Where's JT, Red?" McCoy didn't want this dance to go on any longer, since both participants wanted to lead.

"Still getting dressed, he's a very particular boy."

"Speaking of dress, you always wear an evening gown at ten in the morning? Are you going to offer us a Martini next?"

"Ha, no. I was trying my new outfit for the party tomorrow. You are coming, aren't you, Doc? It would be such a shame to miss you. Bring that gorgeousVulcan too – he's such a hit at parties. My social stock goes up when he shows. Everyone thinks it's perfectly charming that JT knows someone who is a university professor – it's so...worthy_._"

On cue, the comm buzzed and a young Irishman's voice ghosted into the room. "Sorry Ma'am, the Captain's had to go out, the advertising shots he did for Slater's tuxedos need to be approved."

"Oh Hawkins, what flimflam, they could have done that remotely, where's he really gone?" Gaila tutted at the ceiling.

"Well, you didn't get this from me, but I think he's gone for a nose around MediKhan – an unofficial behind-the-scenes tour of the facilities."

The Orion shook her head. "Well let's hope he doesn't end up slugged and put in the River Clyde wearing concrete overshoes."

Laughter came from the disembodied voice, "Ma'am, you know him, he'd float, or more likely be rescued by passing mermaids. Hey, Chekov, are you coming to the party? Go on, help keep me company while I pretend to be the butler."

"Oy no. No way I am going to a party with this lot, it is like going to a party with my parents, everyone saying how much I have grown in the last month, petting my head like I am Porthos. I am staying in with Charlie and Scotty. We can go out another day, yes?"

"Ha, OK, I'll call you later. Ma'am, do you need anything? I've got a pile of paperwork here."

"No, thanks Hawkins, see you later." The comm clicked off.

"Who is that?" Uhura was curious, directing her question to the Orion.

"That's JT's PA, Hawkins – he's young and smart like Chekov here – you'll see him at the party." Gaila inhaled hard on her cigarette, leaving traces of metallic, coppery lipstick on the ebony holder. "Oh, and he's very, very pretty."

"Of course, Gaila is officially JT's PA, since his publicist doesn't think what Gaila really is fits the fan demographic. All the fans should be allowed the fantasy of getting it on with JT, an old ball and chain in the way won't help sell phonograph records." McCoy said.

"You're _married?" _This didn't equate with what Uhura heard about the Captain.

Gaila shot McCoy a death-stare. "No, we're not married, I'm an SI computing engineer, disguised as JT's girlfriend, disguised as his PA. Bones just calls me that after busting in on Jim and me by accident one day – "

"Well, you gotta admit," McCoy winked at Uhura, "there were balls... and chains."

Low groaning from the corner of the sofa drew their attention again to Chekov, who shook his head from behind a pewter velvet cushion he'd clamped to his face.

* * *

><p>Thirty-five hours later, standing once more on the plush pile of the hallway's rug, McCoy smoked a fat cigar behind a slim bronze female nude who held a glowing translucent globe aloft. Bones's free hand was deep in his pocket, a deliberate strategy to stop himself from tugging at the high shirt-collar that supported his bow tie. A twin of the statue that concealed him guarded the other side of the wide doorway into the lounge. Both were unpolished so a film of verdigris covered their bodies, and McCoy thought this a deliberate affectation of JT's, to emphasise their resemblance to Gaila.<p>

His surveillance continued as Hawkins, a tall pale boy in tails, took coats from Uhura and Chapel. White-blonde hair was slicked to his skull; he wore a shadow of Kohl around his eyes, emphasising the emerald green of his irises, and his lips were rouged. McCoy was taken by the sharp angles of the kid's cheekbones and the youthful skeleton that was a fraction too large for his gangly limbs.

Although their ages were almost the same, folk's reactions to Chekov and Hawkins were day and night. Chekov got warm giggles; Hawkins got furtive glances, and notes were pushed deep into his trouser pockets by men and women old enough to know better. Despite his near-albino colouring he was danger wrapped in darkness and silence. The silent thing was an act, possibly modelled on Spock, but he played it well, driving both sexes to foolish acts. If someone looked close, they would see Hawkins wore a twenty-thousand credit watch, and a pinky ring with a Cardassian opal that cost the same as a week in the best hotel in Dunedin; Starfleet didn't pay that well. JT loved to be surrounded by people who surprised him, "One day," Jim told McCoy, "Hawkins'll be head of Starfleet Intelligence."

Earlier, Uhura told Bones she didn't want to meet James Tiberius Kirk. After the last near-miss he'd become a cypher to her, a disguised deep-cover contact who she only heard of second hand. She didn't want to know what he was like, how he spoke, or to find out if the legendary charm was real. In a gesture Christine said was 'just like Jim, what a cheese-ball', Kirk sent Uhura a dress, and what a dress it was. Heavy with silver sequins that threw starlight about her with every step, it swept the floor, draped low in front and back, held up by wide crystal straps.

A hand clapped McCoy on the shoulder, as he watched Uhura and Chapel disappear. "Good evening Bones, drink?"

"Jim, what are you, some kinda psychic? I think about you and you just appear from thin air?" He took the proffered glass from JT's hand.

"You were thinking about me Bones? Aww, that's nice." The Captain leaned back against the wall, hidden along with the doctor.

"You find anything at KhanCorp? What you go looking around there for, all alone? You'll get yourself hurt so bad one day I won't be able to patch you together. And what's the meaning of sending Uhura that dress? Are you crazy?"

"Bones, Bones, Bones." Jim held up the hand that didn't hold a drink. "One question at a time, please. First, no, I didn't find squat at KhanCorp. The place is locked down tighter than a tribble in a Klingon battle cruiser." Jim dropped his voice. "I'm sure Khan's the key to these missing beings, he's behind every racket on this planet. Things are getting out of hand."

"He here tonight?"

"Hell no – I made sure this party was on a date when he was out of town – he's in Dunedin with Marla the moll for a long weekend."

Bones bent to stub out his cigar-butt in an ashtray on the statue's plinth. "Yeah, a weekend with that creep must always seem like a long one. And the dress? You making a sucker out of Gaila?"

"Relax, Gaila chose the dress – no sense Spock knowing that though – you think I'd know the dress-size of a woman I never met? I've heard Spock yammering on about Uhura long enough to know his interest isn't exactly professional. I'm just trying to give the man a jump-start. Where is he anyway?"

"He's parking the hover-bike in the basement. Probably got delayed by Barty," McCoy rolled his eyes, "that superior, officious jack-ass."

"Come on Bones, Spock's not that bad. You came on the bike?" McCoy nodded. "Smooth, but my two most important men on the same mode of transport? Naughty, naughty, Bones. You're like royalty – shouldn't travel together." Jim touched his glass to McCoy's. "Let's wait for Spock and get out of the shadows, talk to some women. You look like a matinee idol in a tux, when Spock gets here, the three of us can go in together, knock 'em dead."

"Anyone ever tell you you're a vain bastard, Jim?"

"Yes, you do. All the time. You're a regular Jiminy Cricket."

~~intermission~~


	8. Chapter 8

**Eight: I could really use a wish right now**

A wall of smoke and chatter hit Uhura and Chapel as soon as they reached the lounge, and a server in a cigarette-girl costume, with a tray of drinks harnessed around her neck, offered them a cocktail.

"Don't mind if I do," said Christine, lifting a funnel of clear liquid to her lips and throwing it back in one, "Harry Mudd in yer eye!"

"Christine!" Uhura chastised the nurse, laughing, "Do you know what's in that?"

"Huh? Nope. It sure reached the parts other drinks don't though." In a practised movement she liberated two full glasses and discarded her empty back on the tray. After handing one glass to Uhura, Christine linked their arms. "All right, let's have a look at the quality of the fellas at this clam-bake."

"Shouldn't we wait for Spock and McCoy?" Uhura was well outside of her comfort zone.

"Nah, they'll come find us. Well, Spock will. Bones is a little slower on the uptake."

Uhura wasn't blind; she saw the way Christine looked at McCoy, although she pretended to abuse him. "Hmm...not as slow as some."

"What?" Chapel feigned confusion.

"Oh, nothing." Uhura played along, her words clanging loud in the throng as the room turned silent.

Christine elbowed her and whispered, "Well, looky here, three guns for hire. Brace yourself."

A male trio of almost identical height strode through the wide doorway wearing similar tuxedos and white ties. Kirk smiled warmly, and shook a few hands in the double-clasp of a presidential candidate. McCoy glared, dark and baleful, shielding his body with a whiskey glass. Spock, in parade-stance, surveyed the crowd with the dispassionate scrutiny of an animal behaviourist observing the interactions of a field of sheep. A buzz of conversation started up again, then the _Enterprise's _nurse and communications officer were stampeded by Kirk's flock.

Christine unhooked her arm from Uhura's and held her about the wrist. "Let's get outta this jam. We see these guys every day, leave 'em to the desperadoes." Uhura was dragged through a heavy door, to an infernal kitchen full of shouting and clatter, up some narrow service stairs – not easy in heels and a dress that weighed some twenty pounds – into a wide, cool landing. The upper floor of the apartment was an ocean liner's deck, chrome balustrades, teak strip-flooring and huge, suggestive floral paintings so three-dimensional she couldn't look away. One in particular, a frilly red rose with a deep-green centre, held her attention until Christine snapped her fingers in front of Uhura's face. "Hey! You wanna look at dirty pictures dressed up as fancy art, or see the best view in New Glasgow?"

"Dirty pictures? Christine, are you twelve?" Despite herself, Uhura laughed once more, the nurse was, as McCoy said, a droll doll.

Christine's black sequinned dress was accessorised with a long, double rope of faceted jet beads, knotted down her bare back to cover the base of her spine. She pulled at the rope and swung it round, revealing a flat oval, a platinum jeweller's tag, which she pressed to the frame of the door at the end of the landing. The frame glowed faint green, and the door opened into a Chinese bedroom, in olive and gold tones. Hand-painted wallpaper depicted plumed birds roosting in delicate twisted trees, laden with sculptural, pale blooms.

A carved bed – easily big enough for four people – dominated the room, and intricate wooden screens lined the walls either side of it. Christine bore left, and heaved one of the heavy screens aside to reveal the outdoors: a terrace paved in dark slate and decorated with ceramic pots and lacquered benches. Red paper lanterns the size of cantaloupes hung overhead from a wide-spaced silver mesh that served as protection against the seventy-six floor drop, and the whole of New Glasgow lay spread out below, twinkling.

"It looks pretty at night – you can't see the rats from up here." Christine looked down through the silver wires. "It's a Faraday cage," her pale hand pointed at the delicate structure, "JT and Gaila come out here in storms, praying they get hit by lightning; it's so rare on Orion, not like this miserable place. They've never been hit yet, maybe one day..."

"I don't like lightning. We get bad storms on the open plain in Kenya; there's no place to hide." Uhura shivered at the thought.

"Do you miss home a lot?"

"Yes, especially here. I've never been anywhere damp like this, I'm wilting for a dry, hot day. Do you miss home?"

"Sometimes, but I got no family there any more." The nurse worried her beads, distant, her usual flow of wisecracks stemmed, so Uhura changed the subject.

"Christine," Uhura traced the rim of her glass with a finger, "do you have any hunches about the disappeared?"

The blonde's brows knitted together. "Khan. It's him all right, but getting any proof is impossible. We're just waiting for him to play a bad hand. McCoy says most crooks are caught by their mistakes, not by brilliant detection. Not that he's exactly an ace detective, not like Spock is."

"He's a good man, our boss, you should cut him some slack. And he's an excellent detective. He sees things Spock's logic doesn't. They balance each other out."

A flush, obvious even in the gloom, spread over Christine's cheeks. "Look at us, talking about men, how corny. Hey, I gotta take a powder, back in a sec. Wait here, OK?"

Left alone, Uhura was attracted by the bulbous ceramic pots, their pearly glaze gleaming in the glow from the paper lanterns. At the rear of the terrace sat the largest pot, an almost-sphere with a flat side pushed up against the apartment wall. It held a gnarled tree, its branches espaliered against the stone. Dark, leathery fruit the size of plums hung from the rope-like wood, and she reached up just as she heard footsteps. Attempting to brush a just-out-of-reach cluster she asked, "Do you know what these are, Christine?"

"Allow me." And Spock was behind her, his body almost flush with hers, his arm extended along the line of her own so the wool of his jacket scratched her skin. The clove smell of his Vulcan hair oil, his warm breath at her ear and the vibration of his voice, a rumble low enough to shatter rocks, rendered her senseless. With a soft snap he detached a fruit and stepped back, enabling her to turn round, but her legs wouldn't move.

"Are you quite well, Nyota?"

The use of her forename caused a softening of her limbs, but she managed to find her sea-legs and face him. "Just startled. I thought you were Christine."

"I passed her in the bedroom. She has gone to locate the doctor." While he spoke, he balanced the fruit between his fingers. "It has a brittle shell, one must be careful breaching it, so that shards do not pierce the heart."

Uhura swallowed her drink in one gulp, almost choking. With a shaking hand, she placed the glass on a low table then watched as he gave the little fruit a twist, so it fell in two halves, still joined at the stem. Juice ran into his palm, and he presented it to her, outstretched, its gift balanced on top. "Take this also." He pulled the white handkerchief from his top pocket and shook it out. She took his offerings in silence. "You will find the taste intriguing, and familiar. Please excuse me, I wish to wash my hands."

With a silvered nail she traced the fruit; it leaked juice and she put her tongue to it, feeling the smooth hard stone and contrasting soft flesh. It was ripe and tasted of watermelon and chili, and she sucked the pulp away, savouring its sweet heat. As she dabbed juice from her chin, Spock returned in his shirt-sleeves, head down as he fastened a cuff-link; such a masculine action. She imagined assisting him before a party, folding his cuff, pushing a link through, straightening his bow tie.

"The fruit is a Vulcan Pla-savas; Mister Sulu was kind enough to cultivate it, and both he and Gaila grow it. In fact Gaila makes jam which she sends to my parents on Vulcan, it is kind of her to do so. Will you join me?"

She sat but could hardly look at him, so distracted herself by folding his handkerchief into a neat square on her lap. "But how can it grow here? This is about as close in climate to Vulcan as Earth's North Pole is to Nairobi."

"That is correct; however this fruit is the rarest on Vulcan, growing in cool, damp caves only found within a few square kilometres in the far south of the planet. Yet here, it grows easily. Its blooms are particularly aesthetic, although brief. It is a pity it is too late in the year to view them. _Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, and waste its sweetness on the desert air."_

Smoothing the white pad of fabric, Nyota still looked to her knees. "Perhaps then, that is one comforting thing on this cold, wet planet, sir."

A warm, steady hand moved over her fidgeting fingers, stilling them. "Lately, there has been another."

Jim opened the door to the master bedroom, looking for Gaila and trying to escape the fawning for a few minutes. A tuxedo jacket lay across the bed, and the terrace screen was ajar. Intrigued, he crept up to the screen and listened to Spock putting the moves on a woman who could only be Uhura. Creeping away, he decided he might hide out in his study, but was dismayed to see the door thrown open again to the sound of Gaila's giggle.

"Did you see the look on the old trout's face when McCoy mumbled 'ass-face' at her back! I thought she was going to have an aneurysm!" Gaila yanked Christine in, just about keeping her cocktail upright. Jim made frantic hand signals, pointing to the outside.

"What's wrong? Did you take one of Crimson's 'special pills'? I told you not to do that, baby." Gaila looked concerned; Jim's shoulders dropped in defeat and he stepped out onto the terrace, motioning to the women to stay back.

"Good evening, Mister Spock. This must be our new communications officer you talk about so often." Uhura stood looking out over the city while Spock sat on the bench. By the slight sway of her heavy gown, he guessed she stood only seconds before.

She glided towards him, her arm outstretched. "It's good to finally meet you sir, I've heard a lot about you."

"Likewise." He took her hand in both of his, switching on the full-watt smile. "You came highly recommended by Mister Spock here. If I may say, his Vulcan description was a little lacking in flair."

Her eyes lowered for a second and she smiled before looking up. "Thank you sir…and thank you kindly for the dress, it's too much."

"You're welcome, call me JT, everyone does." It was time to make a little mischief. " What do you make of the dress, Mister Spock?"

For a couple of seconds, the Vulcan observed Uhura's glittering form. The whole of the terrace was pinpricked with tiny spots of light, the shining column of her gown at its centre. Even the dark fabric of their suits served as a backcloth for the stars.

"It is very striking. While I understand the need to appear suitably dressed at a function such as this, you must agree Miss Uhura carries with her the grace and bearing of generations. She would be as beautiful clothed in rags."

Now that was not at all what Kirk expected. He was well and truly put in his place and a smart retort, about him teaching Spock everything he knew about seduction, died on his lips. "You surprise me, Mister Spock. I'll leave you two alone to get reacquainted." Kirk gave a sharp nod, "Miss Uhura, perhaps you would join us downstairs later for a song, we'd love to hear you." Cinderella looked as if she was ready to pick up her skirts and flee the ball. It was too warm and he high-tailed it from the terrace, badly in need of a large brandy with lots of ice, and one of Bones' cigars.

Uhura put her back to Spock and resumed her examination of the view, trying to calm herself after his blind-side. She felt his heat at her bared skin.

"I have offended you."

Once more, she faced him, "No, of course not – never, Spock. I was taken aback, that's all. It was the most romantic, and gallant, thing anyone has ever said to me. I think Kirk was shocked." Could she say romantic? More than anything, she needed to touch him and she lifted her hand to caress his cheek, slow in her movements, in case she misread the situation. When her hand made contact with his face, she tried not to fall, to be pulled in by the moment, the setting, the clothes, and the hot, humid night.

For the second time that night, he covered her hand with his own, pressing it to his cheek, "I did not intend any misunderstanding; I find your garment exceedingly flattering, but I do not wish Jim to infer it is an influencing factor in my opinion of you. It is mere tinsel, and you are, and always have been, quite lovely."

In the academy, they'd skirted round one another, settling into a friendship bound by the propriety of their respective situations. But that was not all; once he reached a hundred, Spock would be in his prime, while she would be in decline. He would still look young and the thought of her as an elderly wife to a young, virile husband was distasteful and embarrassing. Of all the emotions her fellow humans displayed, the one she most despised was pity.

The night settled heavy upon her and Uhura wished to be among a crowd. "I would love to sing beside that Steinway in Jim's lounge, would you be my accompanist?"

"It would be an honour, shall we?" Spock offered his arm and Uhura took it, despite the sensory overload of the warmth of his skin through his shirt.

Together, they left the tranquil Chinese terrace where the lanterns were grown dim.

~~intermission~~


	9. Chapter 9

**Nine: Who is the lamb?**

This is a gift, it comes with a price, who is the lamb and who is the knife? Midas is king and he holds me so tight, and turns me to gold in the sunlight.

_Rabbit Heart, Florence and the Machine_

.

.

It was the end of the night, and Hawkins helped the serving girls to tidy up among the miasma of cigar smoke and booze fumes. Gaila pushed open the powder room door, ready to plonk herself down on the toilet but there was somebody already standing at the washbasin. Crimson Crest kneaded her face this way and that in the mirror, her blood-red velvet gown accessorised with pearls the colour of gasoline spilled on a road.

High as a kite, thought Gaila. "You OK, Crimson? You wanna stay over?"

The actress teetered away from the sink and sat on the edge of the bath, dead-eyed and stroking its edge as if she'd never seen a tub before.

Gaila knelt down. "Crimson, babe, what's wrong?"

"Is this my face?"

"Of course it's your face baby, why do you say that?"

"Khan did something to me."

One rule about JT's parties that Gaila enforced was no Khan girls; the Mayor got them high and they stayed that way until they left their teens. Marla's short stature and small breasts were no surprise, rumour was she'd had a breast reduction after their marriage, and a butt-load shaved off her butt-load. Each time Khan met with Gaila he put on some kind of an act, admiring her hills and valleys, but his eyes were revolted; he wasn't that good of a thespian. Crimson wasn't the usual Khan girl. Gaila knew he courted her fame rather than her looks, and she and JT were complicit, encouraging it for their own ends. Gaila felt shame in her heart. _What have I become, my sweetest friend?_

Yesterday, when McCoy defined in vague sexual terms Gaila's relationship with Jim, it stung. She was so much more than that, and McCoy damn well knew it. Kirk dreamed of a starship, and when he got her, if Gaila followed, she would be effectively demoted from a first officer position, to a lieutenant in the computing section of a starship; it wasn't for her. More easily than some, she understood Jim's drive, and respected it. When his mission was done, and she had another 'Jim' to look after, she would need Crimson more than ever, in all her off-centre, warm, shining, intelligent, dumb magnificence. On this mission, Gaila had become all together too attached.

"He said not to tell... izza secret, shh..." Crimson lifted a drunken finger to her lips.

Gaila took her friend's hands. "Did he assault you, Crimson? If he did, JT will – "

"No, he made... I want to look nice, what if my studio drops my pictures?"

The Orion was worried; she'd never seen Crimson this way before. The actress pulled her hands away and circled her her white wrist with her fingers beneath the heavy pearl bracelet, prodding and feeling the bones in a way that panicked Gaila.

"I got a new face. This isn't the face I had before." She lifted her hand to pinch and poke her cheeks, digging with scarlet nails until they left red half-moons.

"Sweetie, it looks like the same to me. You're fresher, sure. You got a bit of re-surfacing."

Moving her examination to her scalp, Crimson continued to puzzle. "It's not my skull. Why isn't it my skull, Gaila? Why isn't it the same as my old one? Why would they make it different? Doesn't make sense."

This was not the same Crimson who only yesterday held a vitamin shake, with a straw, between her bare breasts for JT. The same Crimson who, along with Gaila and Kirk, woke up in the penthouse's master suite, naked, warm and swathed in linen sheets. "Sweetheart, I'm gonna get my friend Len, he's still chatting with JT, he's kind of a doctor. Can you stay here for me, stay here for Gaila?"

"Yes, stay here for Gaila." Crimson continued to feel her head.

.

.

"She's not doped, a few cocktails, but nothing that would make her this crazy." McCoy was outside the closed bathroom door with Gaila. "I think she's having a breakdown, but I can't be sure; you'd have to take her to the office, it's risky. Can you keep her here tonight? Tell me how she is in the morning?"

"I wasn't about to send her home, Bones!" Gaila looked him right in the eye; with her heels on, they were the same height. "I think I deserve a kiss for that lack of faith, buster." And then her lips were on his mouth, she tasted of gin and smelled like mangoes. With reluctance, he pulled away.

"Don't you dare wipe away that lipstick, you big lug. Give your nursie something to think about. Acting all tough; I know her type. She aches just like a woman, but one day, she'll break just like a little girl."

.

.

A shepherdess with a lost lamb, Gaila led Crimson to bed and tucked her in, smoothing her forehead as her own mother did to her.

"Please, will you stay with me?" Crimson's voice wavered.

"Of course I will, babe." The Orion shucked her dress and shoes, draped the gown on a small velvet chair, then unclipped and rolled down her stockings, and slid off her bra. She peeled back the cover and slipped in with Crimson, tucking in behind her and wrapping her in her limbs. She stroked and kissed her hair, "It's all right. Go to sleep babe, Gaila's here."

At the end of an hour in silence, she heard Jim undressing, and as he slipped in behind them, he asked, "How's she doing?"

"Let's talk in the morning, OK?"

"OK." He reached over and slid his hand over Gaila and on to Crimson's shoulder, then down to her elbow. Gaila felt his warm breath in her hair – brandy and coffee – and his strong arms about them both.

.

And if you feel the fading of the light  
>And you're too weak to carry on the fight<br>And all your friends that you cared for have disappeared  
>I'll be here not gone forever holding on<p>

_I won't let you go, James Morrison_

~~intermission~~


	10. Chapter 10

**Ten: Mudd sticks**

Days spent at the spaceport sped by at warp speed. The busy back and forth of shuttles was a far cry from being in space, when hours could go by without much of interest passing through her earpiece. She got to know cargo jockeys through their take-off and landing spiel. It surprised her how many beings could ask for a date with a woman they'd never met. Many of the freighter pilots were regulars who met up in the Spaceport truck-stop. They liked fried food, and plenty of it.

Greasy as her meal looked, she had to eat. The search for salad was frequently fruitless, as was the search for fruit, so Uhura had a chocolate milkshake and fries. "Can we join you, Ma'am?" A dragging of chairs indicated the question was rhetorical, and she lifted her eyes to see three men taking the remaining seats around her table. Cupcake, the largest man, was in security, and joined at the hip with his friend Riley, a cargo jockey. They were accompanied by the transporter chief, Kyle.

"What in heaven's name are you eating, Riley?" She took the edge of the young pilot's plate and rotated it to get a better view of the meal. It looked a lot like barbecue wings, but the skin was green.

"It's Elasian water-fowl, tastes like..."

"I know, I know, chicken." Uhura waved a hand in dismissal.

"Uh? No, I was going to say Troyian water-fowl." Uhura and Kyle laughed, and Cupcake gave Riley a playful punch on the arm.

"Busy day today," Kyle flipped his communicator and scanned it."Can't stay too long." Of the three, he was the most serious, always polite and professional. Both he and Cupcake were ex-Starfleet but Cupcake was definitely the more rambunctious of the two. Uhura never asked why Cupcake had left the service, but there were rumours of some kind of altercation. Ex-Starfleet were common at the spaceport; Uhura's cover was tailor-made. Despite his mannerly exterior, Kyle wore a mischievous streak a mile wide and leaned back on his chair to be closer to his target of the day; Cyrano, the truck-stop short order cook was bussing a nearby table, a jowly, jovial man with a murky past. "Hey, we got a shipment of tribbles in today, on the transporter."

Cyrano froze mid-wipe, and silverware clanged to the floor. Uhura heard every transmission, they'd had no such thing. "Kyle, don't be so cruel. Cyrano, he's just trying to get a rise out of you. Ignore him, sweetie." One of Uhura's laser looks was directed at the transporter chief. "Leave the guy alone. He's doing his community service, isn't he?"

Lunch went by in a flash, it always did with the boys to entertain her. Apart from the camaraderie, another bonus of working at the spaceport was the number of unclaimed shipments. Sulu was chief of the NGPD fraud squad. If a shipment was the result of some racket, NGPD were instructed to destroy the goods. In actuality, handing the shipments out to the spaceport staff seemed as good a way of disposing of them as any.

Back at her station, a new message beeped at her, a voice mail from Sulu 'The Fence', who always contacted Uhura in advance if he thought there was good stuff to be got. He would scout out the containers and make sure she was first in line, even offering his opinion if the shipment was clothing. It was sad that confiscated shipments of good fashions were rare, but food was not; fraudsters seemed to go in for luxury food items.

Pressing the earpiece in tight, she listened. "Afternoon Uhura, just thought you'd want to know, there's a stasis container of genuine Jelly Doughnuts from New York City, Terra that appears to have no paperwork, can you keep an eye on it for me? Serial number is 15-20-0617." Unbidden, a smile crept over her face at the message. 'No paperwork' was code for stolen and being disposed of. The fake serial number was the time, day and calendar week the container was to be opened and the contents distributed to waiting gannets.

.

.

On a day off from the spaceport, Uhura sat opposite Chekov at the _Enterprise_ as he hacked through database records for every possible company on New Glasgow, looking for connections between the missing individuals. Doughnut wrappers littered his desk. Oh to be seventeen again, thought Uhura. After a month at the spaceport, her clothes had gotten tighter, and the wolf-whistles louder.

On the scuffed couch sat Spock, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, dotting a Padd in rapid movements with his stylus, its tip a blur. Minutes passed in quiet labour, until Spock broke Nyota's concentration. "One of my ancestors once said, 'When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.'"

"What have you got, Mister Spock?" Chekov's brow rose in a gesture of curiosity, and he leaned away from his monitor.

"Doctor McCoy took tissue samples from Miss Crest." The surname jarred without its forename, did Crimson's publicist, or whoever named her, not think of that? "Her actual age is forty-six."

"Wow! Forty-six? She is old enough to be my mama also!" Chekov rested his cheek on his fist and smiled with one side of his mouth.

"Mister Chekov, your precociously high IQ must tell you, that your conversely low age makes this a possibility for approximately 43.4 percent of the adult human population of this planet."

Ignoring the SpockStat (as McCoy had nicknamed them) Chekov asked, "What is unusual about her age though? We already know she has got the re-surfacing."

"Indeed her recorded birth-date is as we expected, however the age of the muscle tissue samples is between nineteen and twenty-one Terran years."

A colleague hadn't turned up for a shift the evening before, and Uhura worked five extra hours, so she wasn't firing on all thrusters. "So you're saying what? A de-ageing process, or the woman isn't Crimson?"

"I have said nothing, Miss Uhura."

"Well, do you have a hunch?" asked Chekov, "A guess?"

"My guess, Mister Chekov, would be valueless. I suggest we refrain from guessing and find some facts. If you will excuse me, I have an appointment with Jim. Carry on."

"Wait, what about the DNA? Did you test it?" Chekov resembled Porthos, looking for a crumb from his master.

Spock gave an audible sigh and turned round from his path to the exit. Uhura wanted to scream at him for being so rude to Chekov. "Of course, all matched up with her birth records."

"But those records could be tampered with."

"As I have already said, Mister Chekov, let us find some facts."

Uhura had never felt so much like sticking her tongue out at the Vulcan's retreating back, but a lapse in professionalism like that was no example for the Kid and so she clamped her jaw closed. Probably her recent avoidance of Spock hadn't helped his mood, but she needed time to think without his distracting presence. She was stuck, unable to move forward after the encounter on JT's terrace. With modern medical advances, humans could easily live well into their second century and, perhaps in years to come, she might be more accepting of cosmetic surgery. During disturbed nights, Uhura realised she needed a stronger sign from Spock, and felt shame that his declarations thus far were not enough. For them to be together, she needed Spock to be certain it was what he wanted.

Chekov was looking at her with concern, so she turned her thoughts back to the case, her voice false and bright, "So, what we have so far is: McCoy thinks Crimson Crest is unbalanced after her recent re-surfacing, he and Spock think her muscle tissue is younger than it should be, the Captain has prowled round MediKhan on a 'hunch' and found nothing, and we now have seventeen missing beings pinned up on our board."

The Russian stretched one arm behind his head, rolled a doughnut wrapper one-handed into a ball, and finger-flicked it into the waste-basket. "I am so tired of this, I look at power companies, gym membership, grocery delivery, clothing stores, every single thing, and there is no pattern, nothing they have in common, nothing. How are you getting on with the _Herald's_ comm-tapping?"

Uhura's bottom lip stuck out and she puffed out a breath. "It's weird. Looks like they've got into the comm messages of the first few missing individuals, and their next-of-kin, but then the whole thing seemed to stop. Nothing since then."

"That is odd. And who owns the _Herald Enquirer_?"

It was a rhetorical question, and they both chimed, "KhanCorp."

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking, young Chekov?" Uhura tapped her chin in imitation of McCoy's customary contemplation pose.

"I think so, but I do not like it." The boy steeled himself, "We must talk to Harry Mudd." Squirming in his seat, Chekov lowered his head and looked up at Uhura, his lips in a downward curve.

"Will you get those puppy-eyes off of me! It's not a job for a boy anyway. This is a job for a _woman." _She affected a slight purr at the last word.

"Oh," answered Chekov, all innocence, "so we will be sending Christine?"

Uhura threw her pack of gaspers at him, but it clipped Chekov's monitor and shot onto the floor behind his chair. A furry bolt of clacketty claws and panting streaked over the wood and seconds later, Porthos sat to attention by Uhura's leg, holding the pack in his mouth, tail wagging in a beagle version of '_again_!'

"Chekov, I do think this dog needs to go for a walk to...?"

Mudd's schedule was as predictable as the New Glasgow rain. Checking his mental clock, Chekov ran through the journalist's day. "Nineteen forty-two hours. He will be at Finnegan's, eating."

"Well, that's fine. I haven't eaten yet either. Come on Porthos, walkies!"

* * *

><p>Finnegan's was the very cliché of a smoky, Irish dive. Words in Gaelic decorated the windows and Uhura wondered why their translations were <em>thread, needles, chalk<em>. It was a bar, not a nineteenth century tailors supplies. Maybe Finnegan wasn't Irish at all, but he should have at least read an Irish dictionary. All was forgiven though, as it was one of only a few bars on the planet that allowed dogs, although, as a woman, Uhura had to endure Finnegan's blarney.

"Oh my, I recognise that wee dog, so I do. Isn't that Scotty's dog?" He knew full well it was Porthos, thought Uhura. "How has a lovely girl like you come to be with him now?"

"I'm a new communications officer at the port, I'm taking him for a walk." She winked at Finnegan. "Well, that's what the engineer thinks."

"What can I get you, darlin'?" He polished glasses using a fine Irish linen cloth in green and white plaid.

"I'll have a Bushmills, straight up, double." For many years, Uhura harboured a secret talent that came in very useful in many situations. She could drink a Klingon under the table, although the prune juice they insisted on mixing with their alcohol gave her horrible reflux.

After ordering a steak and onion sandwich, and a quarter-pint of Guinness in a bowl, which Finnegan assured her was Porthos' usual_, _she sprang open her compact and used the mirror to scan the patrons behind her. A description of Mudd was issued by Chekov, who painted him as 'a tall fat man with a moustache who looks as if he is dressed from the trunk of a travelling theatre company'. It was an apt portrait. Mudd sat alone at a small table wearing a suit that was garish in the grey light of New Glasgow, a lime shirt and a purple brocade tie.

How would she approach him? _Hey Mudd, someone put the thumbscrews on your comm-tap racket? _No, that sounded like McCoy, plus how on earth would she explain how she knew that? Baiting him would be better. She pulled out a picture of an Orion girl, another tool given to her by McCoy along with her cigarettes; a forgery, a faked image. If you just want to get a conversation going, he'd told her, whip this picture out and ask if anyone has seen her, then steer the conversation round to the person you are really talking about, say she was last seen with them.

"Have you seen this girl?" Uhura brandished the picture at Finnegan who, to his credit, took it from her and gave it proper scrutiny.

"Oh isn't she a pretty one. I'm awful fond of that Orion dancing. I don't know her though. Why are you lookin' for her?" Finnegan leaned down close, his eyes zipping from side to side. "Is she some moll having an affair with your husband?"

"I'm not married." Gorn, she'd fallen straight into the bar-owner's trap, admitting she was single.

"Pity, I like a good cat-fight. Gives me a grand excuse to recycle the dirty water from the mop-bucket." Finnegan roared with laughter at his own joke.

"My dear lady." A shadow loomed over Uhura's space on the bar. "Am I to understand you are searching for a," The voice lowered in volume, what was with all the theatrical whispering in this bar? "missing person?"

She spun on her stool. "Who's asking?"

"Harcourt Fenton Mudd, at your service." Sausage fingers brandished a holo-card, which she pinched between neat manicured nails.

A cursory glance confirmed the identity of the flamboyant figure and she responded to his query. "I didn't say she was missing, I only asked if anyone had seen her."

"Would you care to join me, my dear? Perhaps I can assist you in tracking your _friend_, ask a few people I know."

Here was a man not built or upholstered for undercover work and yet, he seemed to get stories. Perhaps people felt sorry for him. He had the bluster of a grifter, but it seemed everyone saw through him, which made him a tragic figure. This too was probably an act; a double-bluff. "Why Mister Mudd, it would be a pleasure." With a wiggle of her hips, Uhura slid from her stool, plate in one hand, drink in the other, and joined Mudd at his table.

Several whiskeys later, she pretended to let slip her interest in gossip, that she'd heard rumours the staff at the _Herald Enquirer _tried to listen to messages on missing individuals' comms, making sure she touched Mudd's arm often.

"Cerrrrrtainly not!" Mudd boomed, "We have ethics, you know." A pudgy finger tapped his temple as he winked, and he gave a small hiccup. "Besides, the boss told us not to."

"What, your editor on the _Herald_?"

"No-no-no dear lady, the mayor. Oh," his features sank into basset-hound disappointment. "I don't think I was supposed to say that."

"Say what?" Uhura affected intoxication.

"What? What did I say?" Mudd was slurring now.

"I think it was 'let's have a cocktail' wasn't it?"

"Splendid! Yesh, a cocktail!" He rubbed his hands together in glee, then fell back in his seat, snoring with his mouth open.

Harcourt Fenton Mudd was Uhura's new best bud.

It was after ten when she got back to the agency, only to be greeted by Spock, his arms folded. "You are late, and on an unauthorised mission. You went alone at a time when individuals are going missing."

"We're autonomous here. I don't need your permission," she swallowed, "sir." Porthos slunk beneath Chekov's desk and hid.

"Nevertheless, I will see you in my apartment now, please be good enough to follow me up."

~~intermission~~


	11. Chapter 11

This is the final chapter of overt romance. It remains, but in the background, save a bit more Charlene/Scotty. We are half-way through now, and thank you all for sticking with this story.

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><p><strong>Eleven: Standing in the way of control<br>**

Once inside, he locked the door to a neat office behind his small sitting room, and pulled the roller-blind over its glazed upper panel.

"Sit."

Another man would get a mouthful about her not being a Beagle, but this was the Vulcan's way, to be so direct as to be downright curt, so she sat, as instructed, in a chair placed in front of an oak desk. He sat behind it, back a foot or two, on a wheeled leather chair, fingers steepled before his breastbone. For too long, he stayed quiet.

"I am experiencing an unfamiliar emotion." His voice was tight, an undertone of anger.

She didn't ask, she would wait for him to volunteer further information.

He glided up to the desk and opened a drawer using a keypad combination. A drug vial in a blister-pack was extracted, followed by a gleaming steel hypo. Using a thumbnail, he popped the blister and fitted the vial home, all the while displaying a minute tremor in his hands. For the first time in his company, Nyota was frightened. Her eyes darted to the instrument, now aligned on the desktop before him, and then to the exit.

"Why have you locked the door?"

"I wished to speak with you in private." Sitting behind the desk, he withdrew a weighty link from his cuff. It dropped to the leather surface with a clunk, and he began to roll his sleeve up. Never having seen so much as his forearm before, the act was an obscene intimacy. Mesmerised, she followed the play of his fingers turning fine cotton, and the deliberate reveal of dark hair. Time slowed, her tongue trailed her lips until she withdrew it, embarrassed. The sleeve was now above his elbow, and taut tendons below his sallow skin worked in harmony as long fingers closed and opened several times to make, then unmake, a fist. Olive ropes of vein rose on the surface of his inner arm. The other hand rooted about in the desk and found a narrow rubber strap with a toothed buckle. This he fitted above his elbow, tugging on the end to tighten it.

A further shock was in store as he bared his teeth in a grimace, inserted the strap between his lips and bit down on the end to keep it tight. He stroked his inner arm, patting the skin at the crook of the elbow; skin that was soft and smooth. Nyota chewed on her bottom lip, a suppressive tic, and gazed at his fingertips caressing his own flesh. Now his eyes were heavy-lidded, trance-like, and his Adam's apple pulsed briefly in his neck as he swallowed in advance of a deep intake of air.

Light-headed, she was aware her breaths were too shallow, smoky tendrils crept through her pelvis, the room was too hot and stuffy, she could smell the wool of his coat, drying on the coat-stand. Her eyelids sank, she leaned toward the desk...

The hiss of the hypo shot through her torpor, her eyes met with Spock's and as he glared straight at her, he groaned in release, throwing the hypo onto the desk.

For some seconds they gazed at each other, until she whispered, halting.

"What is that?"

His voice in retort was an octave lower, breathless.

"In effect, pulmonary desiccant. My Vulcan physiology is ill-equipped to deal with the damp atmosphere of this planet. I must confess, the first minutes after administration are... altering. I adapt throughout the day to a reduced lung capacity and the sudden improvement in oxygen flow is always exhilarating."

Could he sense the state she was in? Low in her stomach, every nerve ending was on fire. "You felt an emotion?" Her own voice emerged, cracked and reticent.

"Indeed, when you were late returning from your mission, I experienced anger. I have felt momentary anger before, but I could find no cause for it on this occasion. On examining the emotion, I found it to be wrapped about a kernel of," he paused, attempting to regulate his breath and leaned back on the chair, "anxiety. I was anxious regarding your safe return." The commander stopped speaking. He put his elbow on the arm of the chair and rested his forefinger across his top lip. Silence grew, punctuated only by his heavy breath, its swell pushing them apart until he spoke again.

"After your unexpected posting to the _Farragut, _I was surprised to feel your absence acutely, a speck of grit in the soft tissue of my mind. Over time it has become a pearl, which I will guard and cherish until my last breath. I regret I did not explain this adequately at Jim's soiree."

With those words, all her doubts were rain-washed history, and despite her relative sobriety, Nyota found herself moving around his desk with a drunkard's sway; he stayed stock-still. With shaking hands she pushed up the roll of his shirt-sleeve to reveal the strap. His skin spilled warmth onto hers, and she was clumsy in freeing the teeth on the buckle. Leaden seconds passed like minutes as he stared up at her, still breathing hard, his nostrils flared. A trickle of sweat made its way between her breasts, and she was conscious of their outline beneath the thin silk of her blouse. She placed the strap on the desk, feeling bloodless, in fight or flight mode.

The commander's hand slid round her back, pulling her up to the chair, between his knees. All her senses narrowed to that one area where warmth bled through satin, then moved down over the curve of her rear, down the back of her leg, and on to the hem of her crepe skirt, fingers pushing it up, the smooth lining slippery against her silk stockings. Nyota started breathing again; the fist that gripped her innards was loosed, and she pulled him to her until his forehead rested on her upper abdomen, and his voice reverberated through her ribcage... "Nyota –"

Loud banging on the glass door panel, accompanied by the rattling door-knob, caused her to jump and stumble back a step, and Spock to push his chair back.

"What in Gorn's name you doin' in there? Chekov thinks he's found something. Git downstairs. Now!"

~~intermission~~


	12. Chapter 12

**Twelve: And when the truth goes BANG the shouts splatter out**

Of course, Spock was his cool self as they entered the front office. The banging beat of his heart didn't hammer in his chest. He didn't smooth down his clothes, flustered, or run two hands over his head to check each hair was in place. Uhura debated hanging back, but would that look more suspicious? Instead she followed Spock in, hopeful her demeanour appeared normal.

Bones stood behind the Kid's desk; Charlie and Scotty were off duty, so would be briefed later. "Chekov – tell us what you got."

"I was looking at the wrong angle with the database records. I read a journal article about a data migration that did not work. New Glasgow Uniwersity, NGU, got a new student system and the data migration did not have accurate specification. Many deleted records were stored. They were 'ghosts', but the migration queries were not set up correctly and the 'ghosts' were resurrected. Many students who graduated years before were back in the database."

"I have been searching for records on a system. I should have been looking at records _not _on a system." The youngster gave a slow nod.

Everyone was blank and silent until Spock said, "Explain, Mister Chekov."

"All service suppliers have records for customers; active or inactive. If some person stops using a beauty parlour or power company, they still keep all data. Sometimes, so they can send annoying messages to get them to use the service again. All of the companies used by members of the public on New Glasgow keep customer records – even if a customer dies – for data mining, statistics, marketing…many reasons. Even NGU keeps all records now, putting an 'inactive' flag or something like that on the record. "

Uhura had the feeling a but was on its way.

"But a small branch of MediKhan, _TransForm_, has sewenteen ghost records, deleted by an amateur in an attempt to pretend that certain customers had never been there. They are our missing individuals. What is most incriminating is that they were deleted before they were reported missing. In most cases, about twenty-four hours before."

"Mudd told me Khan put a stop to _The Enquirer's_ comm-tap racket. It's all pointing to him," said Uhura.

A thud signalled Christine's collapse onto a battered couch. "I know that clinic. We used to joke about it. All the girls who go in come out with the same nose. We call it _KhanForm. _What about Crimson's birth DNA records, Chekov?"

"I have looked, if they are false, they are wery good. Of course, that does not mean they have not been tampered with. I need to look –"

Some commotion in the hallway halted Chekov mid-stream. Scotty and Charlene's raised voices could be heard on the other side of the door.

"It's fine Scotty, I'm fine."

"You bloody well are not fine, this has gone on long enough now. I'm not standing by any more, is it just that ye're worried? I'm sure it's nothing. Let's ask – "

"Leave it, will you? I promise I'm OK."

"No. Are you deaf, woman? I will not leave it, you'll see McCoy right now."

Scotty burst through the door, his hand clamped about Charlie's slim upper arm; her bearing was that of a recalcitrant terrier forced to go walkies. Ignoring the audience, he deposited her in the middle of the room then turned on his heel and leant his weight against the door, barring any escape.

Their explosives expert was a rabbit caught in headlights; her face ashy, and her eyes glazed.

"What in tarnation's going on here?" McCoy stretched himself up to his full height.

"Sorry, I tried to do this discreet-like but, well, it didnae work. Charlie's no' well. For the last week she's been fast asleep at 2100 hours, and this evening she passed out in the bathroom."

Uhura scanned Charlie's face for clues. Had their explosives expert been younger, she would have pegged her for a pregnant teenager being made to face her parents, or a young bride forced to marry a man who was not the father of her child. Pure fear blazed in Charlie's eyes until a cold trickle of discomfort seemed to run down the walls of the office.

They all saw it, Scotty marching Charlene to her execution. Uhura's heart lurched as McCoy said in a fatherly, too-cheerful manner, "Charlie, come with me into the good office."

Satisfied his goal was achieved, Scotty nodded to Charlene. "It's for your own good love. I'm only doing it to help you."

Through the closing crack in the door, a cornered Charlene looked out, the expression on her face was blank-eyed, beaten resignation, the anticipation of a noose about the neck. Was Charlie really sick? Perhaps she'd kept her condition from Scotty in order to spare him?

At least McCoy was discreet. Scotty perched on the small chair where clients waited, rubbing his palm on one knee in a repetitive action, his face grey and his mouth set in a line.

"Eh, sorry about that, sorry tae interrupt, like. I reckoned it had gone far enough, she's rubbish at going to the doctor. I'm worried about her."

"It's all right Scotty," Christine patted the engineer's knee. "You did the right thing. Gorn knows McCoy is the last person to go to a doctor. He'll understand."

Chekov made a poorly-aimed joke; he was only seventeen after all. "Perhaps she is expecting a baby!"

Scotty's face was scrutinised by the women in the room, who looked for any betrayal of how he might feel. "Eh, aye well I did think about that, but the way she's acting, I don't think so. Unless," he stared at a point in the distance, and when he spoke again, his voice was thick, "unless it's no'..." The ending of the sentence fell away.

Time passed, Chekov explained again his theory about the ghosts in the machine and Scotty listened, his eyes on the window, staring at the rain hammering on the glass.

A creak drew attention to the door and McCoy stuck his head round. "Mister Scott, can you come in please." Uhura's diaphragm rose at his tone, he sounded like a proper doctor – not a detective-doctor – a doctor who was imparting difficult information.

This time, nobody spoke and a charged hush settled on the group. Chekov crept over to a console and began to work, Chapel pretended to look at a Padd and Uhura picked at a loose thread at the front seam of her skirt, trying to calm the double-blow to her nerves from the encounter with Spock, and fear for what was going on with Charlie. Spock too was settled at a console, so Uhura walked over to him and feigned interest, desperate for any distraction. "What are you looking at?"

Before he had time to react, a fearsome tide of swearing streamed through the flung-open door to the good office, it banged back on its hinges and Scotty blustered out, fit to be tied. He crossed the outer office in four strides and left, slamming the door so hard that a Padd near the edge of Christine's desk crashed to the floor, the screen splintering into icy shards. Porthos skittered to the door, and whined and scratched until Chekov rose and opened it so the beagle could follow his master.

Aside from the Russian, nobody moved, but Uhura heard quiet crying through the open door, and the low voice of McCoy:

"Charlie, what do you want to do sweetheart? It's your call."

~~intermission~~


	13. Chapter 13

**Thirteen: So you think I'm alone? But being alone's the only way to be.**

I'm trying to find my peace  
>I was made to believe there's something wrong with me<br>And it hurts my heart  
>Lord have mercy, ain't it plain to see?<p>

_Cold War, Janelle Monae_

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><p>This was not an interrogation, and Charlie was not a suspect, but to Chapel it sure looked like it.<p>

"Right, Charlene has something she wants to tell you. Nobody here will react like Montgomery Scott. If they do they'll feel the force of my boot in their ass." McCoy was his usual tactful self, Christine noted. "She's decided there's no sense keeping folks in the dark now, that's how things get blown out of proportion."

Already small, Charlene was child-like in a green cut-moquette armchair, her feet folded beneath her and a white cotton handkerchief damp and limp in her hand. Her hair was unfettered by its customary tie, and sprang about her head in a halo, each lock separating into petals. Christine thought of illustrations of flower fairies she had on her bedroom walls as a child.

Seconds passed, Charlene's breathing slowed and she twisted the fabric around her fingers. At last she took in a deep breath.

"When I was fifteen I contracted Cardassian Megalovirus, an error on my medical records meant I was never vaccinated."

"But that's fatal in humans, nobody ever – " Christine was jolted, was Charlie telling them she wasn't human?

"I am human, if that's what you're wondering, and you're right, there's no cure. My parents were wealthy, very wealthy. They could buy a lot, but not a reprieve for me, so they did the only thing they could –

"They bought me a suit."

"Sorry," Uhura leaned in and touched the back of Charlie's hand, "how did that help? I'm confused."

Chapel helped out, "She means they extracted her consciousness and put it in a bio-body." The nurse closed her eyes. Her fiancé, Roger had become a suit; albeit an early, crude model that didn't bear scrutiny beneath the skin. She didn't know until in a fight, Roger's flesh peeled back to reveal inhuman innards. Bile rose in her gullet, Scotty's reaction was shock. Christine went through it all; denial, rage, bargaining, depression, but Roger's death meant she couldn't face the acceptance stage, and she didn't know with confidence what her choice would have been.

Revulsion was the nurse's first thought. Charlene was a perfect model, indistinguishable from a human. She'd not been ill or injured in the years they worked together, but until now, Christine hadn't given it a thought.

"Are you indestructible? That is why you are an explosives expert?" Chekov's eyes shone with excitement.

"No, I'm very definitely destructible. I can self-repair much better than a real per – body, but beyond a certain level of damage, I will die. I think I became an explosives expert because it was dangerous. My folks wrapped me in cotton wool, I didn't want to be wrapped in cotton wool. It wasn't my choice to be like this. I woke up from a coma and thought it was a miracle. It was only when I ran away from home at eighteen to join Starfleet that I found out."

"They never told you? Oy! That is bad. What did you do when you found out?" Chekov was indignant on Charlie's behalf.

"Let's just say Starfleet have very good psychiatric rehabilitation facilities."

"But now you are sick? Something is wrong with you?" asked the Kid.

"It's just something simple. A doctor at the silicone mines supplies me with a hypo of selenium and iron once a week; this body needs those minerals but doesn't absorb them well from food. My parents told me it was medication I needed after the CMV, but now I know better. The mine's doctor, he doesn't ask questions. He's away for a few weeks and I ran out of my meds. Thought I could manage without them, turns out I can't."

Christine looked at McCoy, "This isn't in Charlie's Starfleet Medical file."

"No, it isn't. Did Starfleet suppress this information on your records, Charlie?"

"Yes, and I don't want people watching their backs. I'm a walking, talking felony, and my folks could be put in jail; they procured my body after it was made illegal. Starfleet have sheltered me this far, they even manufacture a yearly physical by the mine's doctor on my file. They're condoning something they themselves outlawed. I don't want attention drawn to me," her eyes flicked to Christine for a millisecond, "and there's still prejudice."

McCoy was silent for some moments, arms folded, stroking his chin. "Don't condemn your parents, Charlie. If it was my Joanna, and I had opportunity, well, can't say what I'd have done. I'm sure none of us can, but it was their risk to take, not yours. It's not illegal to be in possession of a bio-body if you didn't procure it, and you were a minor."

Still delighted, Chekov asked, "Are you immortal, if you do not get badly damaged?"

"No, my body will age normally, my parents couldn't afford a perpetual replacement program. I am abnormally normal."

A voice came from the doorway; it was deep and steady. "Who made your body, Miss Masters?"

"I think, Mister Spock, that we all know the answer to that."

~~intermission~~


	14. Chapter 14

**Warning: **Major character injury :-(

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><p><strong>Fourteen: Called out in the dark<br>**

"Heck, don't worry about the dumb mug Kid, he's probably at Finnegan's getting full as a tick. I hope his hangover kills him."

"Sir! You don't mean that, he was not himself."

McCoy reached for his hat and opened the door. "Well son, you and Slim can do what ya want, I'm hitting the hay."

But Chekov was worried so he dialled Finnegan's and got the manager in person. In the background, the noise of the bar made it hard to hear. "Mister Finnegan, I am looking for Mister Scott. Is he there?"

"Ach, well, well, well, it's yourself Pavel. Now, I think he's here, wait a minute now, no, he was here, but he left. Oh, he was on the batter something terrible, mumbling about his life being a sham. I sent him home with a couple of his pals, they said they'd put him and the dog in a taxi. How are ye lad? Enjoying the work?"

Govno, Finnegan could talk for Ireland. "Yes, good, good sir, but what time did Mister Scott leave?"

"Oh, I don't know son, let me have a little think." Chekov's knee shook with frustration, "It was about a half past twelve."

A very bad feeling uncurled in the teenager's gut. "But who took him home? Did you know them? What did they look like?"

"Well now, I don't think I've seen them here, they weren't regulars. One of yer men was big, with dark hair I think, the other one was smaller and blond, or was it red, no-oo, eh, blond, yes, definitely, I think. De ye know them? Is something wrong? Is it a mystery? D' yous need some help?" That was the last thing the Russian wanted from Finnegan; the big Irishman was a clot of Kremlinesque proportions, although he was a useful source of information, so the agency needed to stay on his good side.

"I might need help later, I will call you, thank you sir." Chekov ended the call. Twelve-thirty was almost two hours ago. He dialled Charlene and was greeted by snuffly sobs.

"Scotty, Scotty, is that you?" The audio kicked in a second or two before the visual, her face was streaked with tears and she still wore her day-clothes, the usual sharp creases of her shirt blunted.

"No, I am sorry Charlie, it is me. I wanted to know if Scotty was back home, but I can see he is not."

"No, not yet, or Porthos, he must have taken him to some dive. I'm such an idiot, I should have told you all, trusted you. I'm so, so sorry. I screwed up and I'm going – I'm going to – to lose Scotty."

"Well, I think it is awesome! He is the screw-up, not you, we will find him Charlie. Please, try to get some sleep."

.

.

What 'friends' took Scotty home? Chapel didn't recognise the descriptions either, but she had an idea. "We can track Porthos, Scotty had him chipped so he didn't get lost in the hangars. He's listed in our database like a crewmember, you can track him from there. It might help. Damn dog can be tracked, but we can't."

"Yes! Christine! We can do zat!" He punched the air and they both fired up a screen. Chekov found Porthos in two seconds, and zoomed into a map to find his location. "He is in an alley behind Aldrin, at the junction of Kelvin."

"What in the hell is he doing there?" Chapel tapped on her desk with a stylus. "That neighbourhood is so bad if you pay your rent two months in a row, your landlady calls the cops to find out where you got the dough."

Something was off, Porthos' location dot wasn't moving; even sitting and waiting for his master, he could never keep still. It seemed like he was asleep. Why would he be asleep in an alley? Chekov looked at the link for life-signs, his mouth dry as dust. He didn't want to click on it; if he didn't look at Porthos' health, that meant he was fine; no news was good news. Heavy-limbed, he pressed a finger to the screen, his brain cursing his hand.

"Christine, please can you look up the resting pulse of a beagle?"

When she answered, her voice was quiet and small. "I have Porthos' medical record. His resting pulse is 75."

"B'lyad! His pulse is only 42." Jabbing at his comm, Chekov got a grumpy McCoy.

"What in the hell, I just got in bed, you pest. Whaddaya want?"

"We have found Porthos – he is injured in an alley." Chekov fought the urge to shout at his boss. "He could be dying. Something is not right, Scotty would not leave him like that."

"Location?" The voice was softer now, and Chekov relayed the information. "I'll get Spock, and Charlie. Prepare to beam us there, it's best if we go to him."

"Yes sir."

.

McCoy wasn't having his molecules shaken like a gin fizz in the wee hours for Scotty. The drunken Scotsman could fend for himself, but Joanna's eyes when he told her their old dog had to be put to sleep still haunted him, and he couldn't face the Kid under similar circumstances. His call for backup was prompted by a hunch that something was afoot; he had a feeling this was no cocktail party.

.

A panting, piebald body lay on its side in a doorway, and the second the shimmer of the transporter ended, McCoy was on his knees, uncaring of the gum, cigarette butts and grime. Porthos' head twisted and he tried to lick McCoy's hand, his tail flicking in pitiful recognition as the doctor ran a scanner over his flank. "Cracked ribs, minor tear to the left lung, he's lucky it's bleeding slowly."

"Will he be OK?" Charlene rubbed Porthos's ear, crouched down with the doctor, and made reassuring noises at the beagle.

"I'll give him something for the bleeding for now; Christine can treat him when he gets back to the office." McCoy flipped his communicator while applying a hypo to Porthos' femoral vein. "Chekov, one small one to beam up, keep him immobilised after Christine treats him. If his temperature goes outside of 100.5°F to 102.5°F, make sure to let her know." Sparkling, the transporter beam bore the injured party away and McCoy unfolded, his joints creaking, to see Spock crouched by the door in imitation of his own earlier pose.

"There are scratches at the base of this door. They are at a commensurate height to the marks Porthos' claws would make if he was in a prone position. In addition, I have traced dog-hairs on the cobbles back some twenty yards. The animal appears to have crawled some distance; he has performed admirably."

The implication being, thought the doc, that Scotty hadn't. "Damn that Scottish Palooka! If he's gone and gotten himself whacked, I'll kill him." McCoy ran his hands along the door frame. It was waxy with grease, chipped and left unpainted for many years, and with no opening mechanism on the street side. Behind him, the alley was crowded with squat dumpsters, hunkered down in the dark. Who knew what they contained? Dismembered body parts of unidentified beings?

This was an area fancy folk only strayed into by accident, to be relieved of their credits, their identity, and often, their lives. Every surface was slick. He'd bet a dime to a dollar that an analysis of the cobbles beneath his feet would reveal layers of criminal activity, stained with blood, body-fluids and laser-pistol residue. If the neighbourhood was a person, it would be a sharp con-artist, disguised as a poor, unwashed, helpless tramp. "Scotty's behind that door."

"Affirmative, doctor; I believe the evidence points to such a scenario. In addition, Porthos' injuries do not suggest an innocent explanation." Spock stood. A human man would probably brush down his pant legs, but the Vulcan was oblivious, concentrating on the task in hand and fiddling with the controls on his tricorder.

"What is this place, Mister Spock?" Charlie rubbed at her eyes, all the usual fight in her damped down.

"Administrative records have it down as a store-room. Readings indicate, however, that the building extends substantially in depth below street level." Spock opened his communicator and asked Christine to search for the public plans of the address, and they waited for a minute.

"Only a small basement, not the depth you're reading, sir."

Christine never called him sir. McCoy was sure Slim had a crush on Spock. "We'll beam in. Just one to begin with, in case it's an ambush."

"As I am the strongest, I shall beam down first. If Mister Scott requires medical attention it would be wise for his physician to remain undamaged."

Jim would have argued with Spock, just stupid heroics. In McCoy's experience it was best to agree with the Vulcan. Less people got hurt that way. "Right Spock, tell us when the coast is clear. Either that or run like hell."

With a hand on the phaser beneath his jacket, Spock crouched down on one knee, flipped his communicator and called Chekov.

"Energise."

~~intermission~~


	15. Chapter 15

In which Scotty gets some time to reflect on his behaviour.

* * *

><p><strong>Fifteen: We must brave this night and have faith in love<strong>

For the first time in his Starfleet career, Commander Montgomery Scott was properly frightened. Those nice lads offered to put him in a taxi, but when they got him outside the bar, he felt the burn of a hypo to his neck, then this. He was completely paralysed, being dragged along, the toes of his shoes scraping on asphalt. One of the men shouted at Porthos to get lost; Scotty could hear the persistent click of his claws behind. Through winding alleys and back streets, he tried to count the turns, to memorise the lefts and rights, but his addled brain wouldn't work and his view of the graphite road was so poor in the dark he might as well be blind. All he knew was the neighbourhood was bad, smelling of rancid food, sweat and cheap perfume. If these goons were just taking him somewhere to give him a doing, they didn't have to come so far.

Strip-joint music, shrill shouting and foul language assaulted his ears. To compound his misery, he'd made a complete tit of himself with Charlie and the whole crew, and it seemed like he might never have the chance to apologise. What was he doing stomping off like a toddler and banging doors? From his lowly vantage point, he had time to reflect on his behaviour, and his reflection looked pretty shabby, he could see it in a puddle as his captors stopped for breath, hatless, drooling and pie-eyed. Aye Scotty, you're a right catch, man.

"That damned dog is still behind us." The shorter man swore at the beagle.

"I'll get rid of it – we're almost there." Scotty's stomach lurched and he felt his body jump as the brutish man's leg jerked back. Its connection with Porthos' flank felt like a kick to his own ribs. A high-pitched yelp pierced his heart and he knew if he'd been conscious, he would have turned into a berserker. If he ever got through this, that bastard would regret the day he messed with Montgomery Scott; he would autopsy the arsehole alive (possibly _through_ his arsehole) and give him his kidneys to wear as earrings.

Fog took over Scotty's brain, and when he became aware once more, he was laid out on a hard trolley, wearing what felt like a thin gown, inadequately fastened so that cold metal stuck to the skin on his back. Still immobilised, he could only see vague bright light through his closed lids, and listen. The smells were antiseptic and sharp, and the cool drift of breeze on his exposed arms and legs made saliva pool behind his teeth, and he wondered if a man could drown in his own drool.

Hospitals gave him the creeps, especially those designed to treat healthy people; they were the worst. The sound of surgical instruments hitting a tin tray caused involuntary contractions in his pelvis. As exposed as a frog pinned out on a slab, every sinew was knotted in an effort to fight his paralysis. He sensed a hand in close proximity to his cheek, and questioned if it held a scalpel, or just a stylus.

Nightmare visions of being dissected alive assaulted his mind, being able to feel every burn of the blade yet unable to move. He saw his organs heaped, glistening garnet, into kidney-dishes, then being packed into stasis-containers.

Inside, he yelled out like a man in a dream, screaming in silence, unaided and undiscovered.

A middle-aged man's voice; "Body-shape and height looks about right, we might have to increase his nutrients for a few weeks though, or just say the client's been on a diet."

A younger woman, as if she was checking off a list. "New teeth, very minor jaw reshape, iris re-pigmentation. No distinguishing marks to remove. He's in good shape, internal organs excellent, no signs of abuse, amazing considering the condition we found him in. It's remarkable how much he looks like him, we don't usually collect like this, but the guys did good, said they saw him and the resemblance hit them like a ton of bricks. Luckily he was plastered at the time. I had to check to make sure he wasn't related. Shit, that would have been embarrassing."

What in the Milky Way was going on? It sounded like he wasn't going to be stripped down for parts, which was a bonus.

"How was the gene-work?" The man again.

"Good. Excellent in fact. No pre-disposition to any major cancers, or mental disorder."

Aye, well that was nice to know. When he was being made over to pretend to be someone else.

"Very good, get him prepped for a wipe."

Scotty's stomach dropped several storeys; the man wasn't talking about a bed-bath. Repulsive, cold jellied fingers rubbed at his temples, leaving slug trails that went frigid on his skin, and he felt something rubbery pressed up against the gel. Goose flesh rose on his limbs. Why did he sabotage his love? Where was Charlie? He wanted to believe she was out there, looking for him, being the better person.

Another hypo at his neck, and the dark descended. In his mind, his limbs flailed, he raged against the dying of the light. In reality, he was a waxwork.

.

On awakening, he found himself back at the agency, in the good office with McCoy opposite him looking pensive. Thank the good Lord, he'd been rescued. Still in the gown, he wondered why they hadn't given him clothes. How long was he awake?

"Thanks for getting' me, I thought I was on the way out there. I'm freezing, man. Any chance of gettin' me some clothes? I know I made a right arse of mysel' earlier."

For an age, McCoy stared, not speaking. "D' you think you deserve clothes, Scotty?"

That was odd, Bones was thrawn, but not normally prone to vindictive fits. "Eh, look, I'm sorry, can I see Charlie?"

"Charlie isn't here, she's gone." Cold, hazel eyes continued to stare, and the doctor picked up a stylus and played it between his fingers in a miniature majorette's twirl, never shifting his gaze. "She left. She was very, very upset."

"Where is she? What's happened to Porthos?" Scotty felt like he was five years old, gripping onto the chair with cold hands, his legs swinging. When his grandmother died, his dad took him into his study and sat him down and he knew something was very wrong, that his mother was acting funny. Was she angry with him? At five, he didn't understand the tight feeling in his belly or why he suddenly needed the toilet, and wanted to run away when his father hadn't said a single word.

At six, he had a dream he was in a roller coaster and the restraining field failed, catapulting him into space and throwing his body onto a hard surface eighty feet below, slamming him awake. He'd bawled the house down until his dad came running as if a banshee were after him. Afterwards, he'd lain in bed, a fine sheen of sweat drying cold on his skin.

Wait, his legs swinging? His feet always touched the ground in this chair. He watched his bare feet dangle then looked up at McCoy. There was nobody at the desk. At his back, he heard a floorboard creak.

"Well, what have we here? One ex-boyfriend." Around the chair, lithe as a python, slithered Charlie. What could he say? Nothing. Say nothing, that was best, so he watched her retrieve a bentwood chair and set it opposite him, facing away so she could sit astride the seat and lean her arms on the back. Unfortunately for Scotty, his brain made his mouth open against his better judgement. What came out wasn't big, and it wasn't clever. It was small, and it was petty.

"So, when we shagged, did you only respond because you were programmed to?" Where in hell did that come from?

"I see you're living up to the stereotype of your sex. You find out your girl's got a bio-body and the first thing you think of is whether robo-girl faked it. What an asshole. You can go screw yourself in future."

Tears welled in Scotty's eyes, "Ah shite, Charlie. I dinnae know what made me say that, it was stupid."

"I just told you why you said it. You hurt me. I never want to see you again as long as I live. You're just another narrow-minded bigot."

"Now Charlie, that's no' fair, you could have told me sooner." Right was on his side there – wasn't it?

"Would you have stayed with me if you knew? Really?" Her eyes were lasers, burning through the trite platitude on the tip of his tongue, and maybe just saving him.

"I – I don't know." He put his head in his hands, then lifted it, clutching at the threads of his relationship, "But we've got to be together. Please, I don't know what to do to make it better. Tell me and I'll do it." Whatever it took, Scotty wanted them to be friends at least, or did he just want to convince the others, by her friendship, that he wasn't a total bawbag?

"McCoy took care of it. You're getting a transfer. We won't have to work together." A vixen, she rose, pushed the chair aside and prowled from the room, her head high.

Wobbling, he limped after her into the front office; Chapel wasn't at her desk, neither was Chekov. Where was Charlie? The outer door was locked and he couldn't get out. A Padd sat at a haphazard angle; it was covered in a thick layer of dust. The entire office was covered in dust. In a frenzy, he yanked open drawers; all empty. Frantic, he jabbed the main comm button. A tinny voice spoke out. "This line is terminated...this line is terminated..."

It was so cold, he pulled the thin gown tight behind him, trying to cover the gap at the back. "This mind is terminated...this mind is terminated..." Far back in the comm channel sound mix, he thought he could hear Spock's voice. Scotty sat in Chekov's cobwebbed place.

The sweat on his skin dried cold.

~~intermission~~

Scotty-isms

Doing: beating

Pie-eyed: drunk

Thrawn: stubborn

Bawbag: scrotum


	16. Chapter 16

In which Charlie becomes an accidental BAMF.

* * *

><p><strong>Sixteen: Don't underestimate the things that I will do<strong>

Along with Charlie, McCoy joined Spock in the basement, and as the transporter brought his ghost-limbs back to him, he smelled the familiar antiseptic of a hospital ward. Six-bedded, one was occupied and two had curtains drawn about them so he couldn't tell if they housed anyone. After a brief scan of the room, he could detect no observation cameras. All three ducked behind the fabric on one of the curtained beds. "Spock, that long wall – one-way glass, do you think? Are we being watched?"

"Affirmative Doctor, shall I investigate?"

"Please do." Their hidey-hole by an unconscious patient was a relief. He had no wish to watch Spock's bony ass as he crawled away on all fours, just in case they hadn't been spied yet. Many, many beings in New Glasgow would love to see the Vulcan on his hands and knees. Like Chekov, Spock's interrogation technique – who was he kidding, _seduction _technique – was a sure thing, except with Chekov, witnesses handed him soup and cookies. With Spock, they dropped secrets, and underwear. Charlie called him _Mata Hari_.

"This is weird." Charlie whispered; she'd peeled back the sheet on the patient's upper torso to expose an attractive young woman in her early twenties, although on this planet she could be a hundred and ten.

Even to McCoy, she looked familiar. "I know her... I think, or someone who looks like her big sister."

Charlie was bent double, examining the woman's upper arm. "She looks a hell of a lot like Felicity Angel."

"That actress with twelve kids? The one who does ambassadorial work for Tarsus?" He surprised even himself.

"She's got nine kids, and she's an ambassador for Cardassia Prime. It's OK, see Doc? You're catching on. But where are her tattoos? Tell me that. And honestly, to me, she looks a little heavy."

"Heavy? What in tarnation are you talking about? She looks like about a hundred and five pounds." To him, the girl looked scrawny, she could probably stand to put on another twenty-five pounds to better effect.

"Let's scan her, find out what her story is." From his belt, he pulled the small scanner and ran it over the body. "Interesting, very interesting." He mused, staring into space for a few seconds.

"What? Come on!" Charlie hissed, and hopped lightly from foot to foot, her eyes wide.

"In the last 48 hours she's had a breast reduction and rhinoplasty. Internal scar-tissue will be gone in another day or so. But do you want to hear something really creepy?" Charlie nodded _yes, get on with it. _"Her fingers and toes have been broken at each bone, and lengthened by a few millimetres."

Charlie looked up at him. "This is some weird fetish, isn't it? She's an FA."

"Would you go to the lengths of getting your toes done? Who'd know? You'd have to be totally off the planet to do that. Even professional lookalikes don't do that. This looks more like a doppelgänger designed to fool those very, very close to the person. She's..." McCoy couldn't believe what he was about to say, "...had a bit of a trim elsewhere as well. She'd probably fool someone _very _close."

"What?" Charlie took a moment to catch on, "Oh!" She looked towards the sleeping woman's crotch. "But why do they need to fool them? Anyway, she's too young to fool someone if it is supposed to be her."

"I've no idea, I'm just an old country doctor. This is completely out of my area, perhaps she's not finished?"

"We've got to find Scotty, he must have rumbled something. He's probably tied up somewhere in back." McCoy grunted in the affirmative, and got the shock of his life when Spock's head popped through the curtains. "Spock, you Vulcan spectre! I thought you were security."

"Security has been neutralised." He used the same tone another person might use to say 'I've put a cup of tea on the counter for you,' but McCoy knew _neutralised_ – such a benign word – could mean a lot of things.

"What happened, Spock?"

"On the other side of the glass partition I discovered a youth in a lab-coat wearing ear-buds at high volume, and playing a multi-player game. I believe it was HALO, series one-hundred-and-twenty, part seventeen. I confess the premise of faster-than-light travel in the original iteration was innovative, and a shrewd prediction – for the time."

"Will you shut up about the game, Spock. What happened?"

"I nerve-pinched him. It was difficult to ascertain any difference between the before and after states."

Gorn the Vulcan was verbose, and at the most inappropriate times. "So we're in the clear?"

"Unknown."

Charlie had the patient's arm in her hand, and was examining the fingers with morbid fascination. She dropped the limb. "Right, are you ladies done? We need to find Scotty. I'm mad at him, but I don't want him hurt... much."

The patient drew Spock's attention. "This woman is an ambassador for Cardassia Prime."

Dispirited that even Spock knew what Charlie was talking about, McCoy grumbled, "Apparently, but she's really a surgically-enhanced FA, as far as we can tell."

"What is her condition?"

"A very deep, drug-induced sleep. I have stims, we could wake her."

The Pocket-Rocket became animated, "To do what? Ask why she's obsessed with Felicity Angel, or for her to be scared out of her wits that someone knows about her? She could have been coerced, or worse. Don't do that, please, she might not even know. Mister Spock, can't you look inside her mind? It's an invasion, but it's better than waking her up. Please?"

What Charlene said was true, how could he not see it? This girl could be Joanna in another life; scared, broke and broken, willing to go ahead with any scheme some deadbeat boyfriend suggested. Girls like her, they came expecting fame, fortune, and bright lights. Oftentimes what they got was infamy, poverty and the bright lights of a mortuary slab.

"She is unable to offer consent." The Vulcan curled a forefinger below his nose in contemplation.

"Spock! We gotta find Scotty, it might help." Thoughts of his no-longer-a-baby girl made McCoy snippy.

With reluctance, the Vulcan stepped into the theatre created by drapes and dimmed night-shift lighting. A dark master of ceremonies, he raised an arm, and in increments that seemed to take minutes, lowered it.

McCoy had never seen a Vulcan do this before, and for the first time, the sight of Spock's face was fully alien. Despite protestations to the contrary, there was always a humanity in the Vulcan's features. Above the girl's face, slim fingers flexed. Pulled by sinew and tendon, they swayed in a seaweed dance, caught beneath the surface, then drifted onto the girl's face. A minute passed, and Spock was silent. As an adolescent, McCoy's grandmother took him to church, and he felt reverence, despite his agnosticism. This was a reverential moment and he felt shame for his grouching.

Two minutes passed and Spock's hand slipped from the girl's skin. Charlie skirted the perimeter of the bed and put her hand on the Vulcan's shoulder. Seconds ticked by and McCoy felt dread. What was going on? Dumbstruck by propriety and respect, he couldn't open his mouth and instead, walked round to take Charlene's vacated space at the opposite side of the bed.

A single tear tracked down Spock's face. "She is a husk. Her mind is gone."

"You're saying she's," thoughts of Joanna clouded his professional demeanour, and his voice became a hiss, "unable to function in this state?"

There was no answer. Charlie's slim hand wiped Spock's cheek, and she hugged him tight. His response was to allow it, an acceptance McCoy never imagined from the Vulcan. They were the hybrid brother and sister, suffering at every ignorant fool's clumsy hands. A change of mood and morale was essential.

"We need to find Scotty so I can be first in line to give him a good ol' southern lickin'. With your permission, Ma'am." A half smile twisted on Charlie's lips. "There you go, that's better! Let's see who the rest of these folks are."

.

An Orion woman occupied the other bed and McCoy brushed her forehead with his hand, pushing back a stray black lock. Only base brain functions displayed on his tricorder. She could breathe, and with electrical stimulation, probably walk and perform simple motor tasks, but anything more complex, without a mind, was impossible.

"You know her?" asked Charlie.

"She's Gaila's friend. I knew her - once. She looked the same, she hasn't been altered." That night in the bar, she was sturdy and strong, here in the bio-bed, she looked like she'd gone ten rounds in the ring, her neck and jaw bruised a livid indigo.

"Why haven't they altered her? Is she new here?"

"She was a mute, her voice-box was damaged as a child, possibly even deliberately, as a mark of subservience. I'd say at five years old by the scanner readings. See these trails beneath her skin? Like veins, but too narrow? They're regen-conduits. Her voice-box is being regenerated, hence the bruising. She'll have a voice for the first time since she was five, but her own memories are gone. Whatever makes that voice work, it won't be her. They're probably waiting for that to mend first." He pressed the scanner to the woman's throat. "It's fully regenerated now, finished a couple of hours back." To McCoy's horror, a tear clung to his eyelashes, then splashed onto the woman's clavicle, exposed by the folded sheet. He brushed it away and bent to kiss her shoulder, then covered her up to the chin.

If he switched off the body's life-support it had to be with the knowledge that her mind wasn't still stored elsewhere. Until conclusive evidence turned up to say these minds were irrevocably erased, it was essential to keep these husks alive.

What in heaven could be the motivation for such a foul process? These people had physical presence, but what was done to them was murder, as surely as if they had been shot. McCoy mulled over the political and legal implications of lobbying to introduce yet another murder charge on New Glasgow. At least with this crime, they had a body. His thoughts were interrupted by silence; the room was too quiet. Distracted from his examination of the Orion, he glanced up to see Charlie at the other curtained bed, frozen, her hand still on the drape she'd drawn back.

Scotty.

What happened next would be burned on McCoy's brain for the rest of his life.

.

A swish alerted them to the opening of the ward doors, and the trio looked up to see a stocky male orderly step through reading a plasti-film chart, brows drawn down. He looked as if thinking would always be a bother to him. Distracted, his head rose, chin wobbling, and the stopped-breath silence of mutual discovery took over the scene. For milliseconds, each person in the tableau was caught in amber, until the orderly's hand rose, shaking and slow, towards a red button at the frame of the doors. In his peripheral vision, McCoy saw Charlene's arm lift.

A phaser blast hit the man's hand and he crumpled to his knees, sheet-white and clutching his wrist, allowing the plasti-film to cut through the air and float over the floor to McCoy's feet.

A hand. Its mechanics were simple engineering. A child could replicate them with twine, buttons and drinking straws. For the second time that night, McCoy contemplated bone, sinew, muscle and skin; he could see it all now in a real-life anatomy lesson. Where the phaser hit, flesh disintegrated in onion-skin layers to below the first finger-joint, revealing grotesque white bone. The orderly gazed at his half-flayed digits, cauterised and bloodless. Without the cohesion of cartilage and tendon, the phalanges were disarticulated; they teetered for a second then fell to the ground with the bounce of dice on baize.

Whimpering, the man scrabbled in frantic panic for his bones, gathered them up with his good hand and shoved them into the pocket of his lab-coat, his movements robotic with shock. Once the bones were secure, he appeared to return to his senses, eyes darting about the scene. Another second passed in which his eyes grew huge and his mouth trembled. It was an expression McCoy knew only too well; his daughter Joanna wore it as a toddler. It was that precious moment where distraction was vital, before a fallen child screamed bloody murder, and the neighbours started hammering on their ceiling with a broom-handle.

McCoy whipped out his own phaser and stunned the man. Today was not a good day to be nicknamed 'Bones' and he wondered how long it would take to erase the memory of a grown man collecting up parts of his own skeleton like dropped coins.

"Charlie, what in the name of Gorn was that? I nearly saw my dinner for the second time tonight." Charlene shook, her arm still raised. McCoy rested two light fingers on her forearm until she lowered the phaser so it pointed to the floor. "Let's not use that heater again, shall we? I don't wanna be walkin' around filled full o' holes." He prised the phaser from her cramped hand and disarmed it, before examining the settings. They were mostly normal: D (disarmed); S (stun); K (kill) and one, unfamiliar setting: C. "Can you talk, sweetheart?"

With breathy, hesitant words, she explained; "Scotty hot-wired my phaser. He told me only to use it in extreme danger, aim for limbs only, when I wanted to really mess with someone's head."

"Well you sure did that Charlie, you messed with my head. Don't do that again. Did you know that was gonna happen?"

Charlene's eyes were glued to the weapon in her hand, "I d-didn't, I - I swear on Starfleet, I didn't. Scotty - "

There were more important things to worry about. McCoy stooped to pick up the medical chart, and they crossed the few feet to the Scotsman's bed. Spock was there before them, his fingers splayed on Scotty's face, head lowered. Charlene, tears streaming down her face, went to the bed and took Scotty's hand, pressed it to her cheek and said, "I don't care what happens you dumb Scottish ass, just as long as you're alive, please be OK, please be OK, please..." Her forehead touched the honeycomb cover over the engineer's still form.

At the end of a heart-stopping silence, Spock stated, "Mister Scott is unharmed; whatever procedure they aimed to carry out has not been initiated."

McCoy's arrested breath escaped in a loud whistle. "Are you sure, Spock?"

"I can assure you, Doctor, he is _all there."_

"Is Scotty _ever_ all there?" said Bones, before witnessing a dramatic change in Charlene; she shook the inert Scot and thumped him hard on the chest.

"Stupid dummy! Could have got yourself killed, well screw you! See if I care! You can go to – " Reining in some composure, she looked up from the bedside, her face contrite. "Sorry sir."

"Alright Charlie, let's take this back to the office. You're scaring our Vulcan." Noting tubes disappearing under the cover, McCoy peeled the blanket away from Scotty. "I'm going to wake him and get him untethered. I want you to beam back with him to the agency, OK?"

"Yes sir."

* * *

><p>Back at the <em>Enterprise, <em>Chekov helped Charlie with a stumbling, mumbling Scotty. Porthos was beneath his desk in a basket Christine took from the couple's apartment, two of Scotty's sweaters tucked about the basket's rim to keep him still. He was dopey, but didn't appear distressed, unlike his master. Even the Scotsman's sudden appearance didn't make the little dog stir and Chekov wondered if Porthos was pretending to sleep.

"The effects of the neuro-paralyser should wear off in a few hours." Chapel leaned a hip against her desk, arms crossed over her chest and a wary eye pinned on Scotty. "Fancy gown you have on there Scotty, I can see your bare ass. Is that to make it easier for us to see you talking out of it?"

"Do you want to get him upstairs, Charlie?" Chekov tried not to laugh at the engineer's expense.

"Yeah, let's get him to bed, thanks Pavel." Charlie hesitated. "Christine, do you mind if I bunk with you tonight?"

"No problem, go get your stuff." Despite her friendly tone, Chekov saw something in Christine's eyes. As she spoke to Charlie, she looked up, and to the left, not at Charlie. It left him unsettled and he gave Uhura an enquiring glance; she just shrugged.

Chekov wouldn't sleep. Not until the doctor and Spock returned. Addressing Uhura, one arm around Scotty, he asked, "You want to help when I get back, dig into this medical clinic's files?"

She smiled a tired smile. "You bet, and Chekov?"

"Da, yes?"

"Have you got any doughnuts?"

~~intermission~~


	17. Chapter 17

**Seventeen: You are someone else, I am still right here**

Military training at Starfleet instilled an ethos of discipline. Spaceship living was by nature ordered, spare and almost Japanese in its aesthetic. Down here, tethered to a planet, everyone, even Spock, had relaxed in their living arrangements. When Charlene needed to clear her head, she went to Sulu's apartment on the south side, an eccentric attic carved out of a large mansion long divided up into little flats. It had a tiny glass-house on the roof where he reared a variety of plants tolerant to the dim, watercolour light. The apartment was cheerful and cluttered; bright art decorated the walls and tea was served in black earthenware cups painted with squiggles of slim red and white blossoms. He had blankets, stories and love to wrap you in.

Christine's living space was not that way.

"Do you really sleep here, Chris? Are you sure you don't have some secret apartment somewhere that looks like an incendiary device went off in it?" Charlene always teased her friend about her minimalist décor. This was the living space of someone who didn't want ties, the space of a dame on the lam living out of a suitcase, a real-life situation that haunted Charlene.

Starfleet protected her, but contact with her parents diminished through fear of their crime being uncovered. In Charlene's head, that was her official reason, but sometimes, when she couldn't sleep at night, she let the groundwater of truth seep up. The bio-body caused a rift. They were desperate, about to lose their only child, and now they lived much as she did, in a small apartment on Terra, all their money gone and telling lies to their friends about an investment gone bad. They were a bereavement to her, but without the death.

Now sitting opposite her friend, clutching hot tea that wouldn't warm her hands, she could see things were cracked between them. If Charlene was to stay at the _Enterprise, _it had to be mended.

"I'm not like Roger, Chris. It took almost four years for me to accept _this_." She waved a hand over her torso and lap. "Starfleet paid for the best shrinks – they couldn't look a gift horse in the mouth – even if the horse was loco."

Charlie put her tea down on a coaster atop a polished, barren side table. In her and Scotty's apartment, a similar table was stacked with teetering piles of reading matter: _Vogue;_ _The International Journal of Propellants, Explosives and Pyrotechnics; _and_ Warp Drive Mechanics._ When Charlie tried to organise the piles, she found bits of paper covered in Scotty's scrawly hand, anything he could scavenge; wrappers, or thin cardboard from packaging. Engineering calculations covered the whole surface of these bits of jetsam; he said the CalcuApp on the Padd was too slow. Her eyes pricked at the thought of never finding those odd, archaic scraps again.

"It's still me, Chris. I'm still here, and I need my friend more than ever." Christine stayed silent, looking at nothing and Charlene tried a different tack, the false cheer of her voice gating even to herself.

"What's that over there?" Charlene pointed to a tiny walnut cabinet, a few inches high, cloud shaped and with a brass mesh on the front. A faint blue light blinked behind the metal.

"It's a bio-monitor. I hooked some sensors up to Scotty, to make sure he doesn't become distressed in the night." The nurse gave an apologetic little smile.

"What? Like a baby monitor?" Charlene smiled too. Scotty had been a cute baby; his mother insisted on sending holos, and the Scotsman got, as he said, 'a right beamer'.

"Exactly, a baby monitor for a big, bare-butt baby. I drew the line at a diaper but he won't be strong enough to make it to the bathroom, so I catheterised him and gave him a bag. I was tempted to let him wet the bed, but I did apparently take some kind of Nightingale oath to help the sick, and I didn't want to put you to any trouble. It's just an old-style Texas catheter, like a condom, but with a little surgical glue around the edge to stop leakage. The look on his face will cheer me up on a cold winter's night 'til my dying day. It was even better than the look I got when I checked his sphincter response to make sure he had full control of the rear exit."

Charlene hiccoughed her response through tears of laughter, "Why, Christine, I think you still care," and imagined Scotty's horror at Christine's ministrations. Despite 'shite' being one of his favourite words he was quite puritanical about bodily functions, a bathroom door-always-closed type of guy. She had enough ammunition to shut him up for the next ten years, if they had them. The tears turned bitter, but she still acted amused. "And remind me never to get on your bad side, ever." Perhaps, Charlene thought, if they could just keep talking, things would settle and Christine would see nothing was changed.

"Well, Starfleet did pay a lot for his training."

"Uh huh? Sure that's it?" Charlene balanced her chin on her fist and looked Christine square in the eye.

The nurse rubbed at her forehead, looked away and spoke down at a spot on the rug. "I'm...I was angry with Scotty, well, not really. I was angry at myself and I took it out on him. His reaction could have been mine but Roger died within minutes of me finding out; I only had time to to be repulsed, and to pity him. Beyond that time-frame, if he'd survived..."

"Christine, I'm not Roger, he was an android. I'm just like a real girl, if you cut me, I bleed. I'm a synthetically created biological life-form; bio-org, not cyborg."

"So now you are working for an organisation that seeks to indict your creator?"

Now Charlene was rubbing her temple in small circles. The small apartment felt airless as a tomb opened after a hundred years. "Khan is no more my creator than...than a robin is the creator of the cuckoo in its nest. Wow, that was a very bad analogy."

"Were you a cuckoo in your parents' nest, Charlie? Gobbling up all their resources?" A tense silence descended between the two friends, if indeed that was what they were now.

"What, are you a shrink now? That's usually Bones' hobby, doling out pop-psychology. Believe me, after four years of Starfleet therapy there's nothing you can throw at me." Charlene couldn't believe her ears; it was all she could do not to walk out there and then, and her ire rose. "I don't think a woman who is so terrified of love that she treats the one man who genuinely cares for her like a joke, is qualified to play at shrink. At least I jumped in the pool, knowing I could drown."

The nurse's head jerked up and for a while, Charlie thought Christine might smack her in the kisser, but instead, she watched her mouth twist and her complexion grow pink. The nurse put her hands over her face and breathed a few deep breaths, and when she removed her hands again, all colour had left her_._

"I deserved that." Christine twirled one of her ringlets and, not for the first time, Charlene though the nurse's blonde curls were at odds with her sparky demeanour; she was a brunette trapped in a blonde's body.

"Chris... I'm sorry, I didn't mean to – " _Didn't mean to what? Stick the knife in? Stoop to your level? Hurt you like you hurt me?_

Chapel shook her head, "Charlie, can we talk about something else?"

"Sure."

"Why was Scotty taken? He was never a patient at that clinic, I got Chekov to look it up."

"I wondered that myself, maybe it was opportunistic? Everyone keeps telling him how much he looks like that comedian, Emon Spigg. Is it an extreme form of FA-ing?" Scotty's blonde lookalike was a source of teasing from the spaceport crew who shouted the comic's catchphrases at him so often the joke was worn micron-thin.

A skeptic's eyebrow rose on Chapel's face, an expression that was pure McCoy. "What, you mean have a famous person as a pet? You'd have to lobotomise them."

"Well, they were doing that, after a fashion." A shiver went through Charlene as she thought how close Scotty had come to being a shell.

"What about security doubles? Lots of famous people have them." Christine scratched her chin and Charlie wondered if she was morphing into the doctor.

"Yeah, it would be fine until you had to make them talk by remote control, like at an award ceremony. Well I suppose with some of them you couldn't tell, they read the autocue like robots anyway. Like that Klingon action film guy, Sub Bat'leth."

"Ha!" Christine snorted. "He doesn't need to read, he just needs to hit stuff and lift downed shuttle cars off squealing dames! But if they were just getting into a car, or something, a security decoy might work."

"I don't know," mused Charlene. "Seems like an awful lot of bother to go to."

Long into the night they speculated, waiting for Spock and McCoy to come home.

* * *

><p>Funny how you took walking and talking for granted – well no, it wasn't funny. Not one bit. Scotty knew he talked a lot, he wasn't the strong silent type; a gab, his mum called him. Without Charlie the bed was cold, but at least Christine was decent enough to tell him where she was, and that Porthos was out of danger. Embarrassing as his interaction with the nurse had been, at least it was preferable to Scotty waking up in a cold puddle, indignity heaped on humiliation. He'd already formulated a strategy for the next day: apologise, apologise some more, then apologise again, and repeat. If he could speak. In a restless doze, he heard someone enter the room and his stomach tightened, he knew he was vulnerable as an infant. Perhaps it was just Christine, coming to check on him.<p>

"You can't talk, so you might as well listen." Bones was sitting by the bed, in shadow. "I've got a question for you, Scotty. If I came to you today and said Charlie was dying, but we could get an illegal bio-body and cure her, would you do it? Would you break the law for her? Or would you let her die?" The doctor rose, smoothing down his trousers. As the door creaked open McCoy hesitated, silhouetted inside the frame. With his broad shoulders, height and fedora in his hand, he looked to Scotty like a gun-slinger from the old cowboy movies his father loved so much.

McCoy put on his hat, "You think on it, you've got all night."

~~intermission~~


	18. Chapter 18

In which a bad-guy drops a small cluster of f-bombs and McCoy is not amused, 'I don't much care for your language, shows a lack of imagination.'**  
><strong>

* * *

><p><strong>Eighteen: Confess to me your sins my son, and you shall sleep once more<strong>

At least Scotty's bizarre re-calibration of Charlie's phaser was good for something. Although he baulked at using it, when the orderly awakened, it would make a powerful persuader. They couldn't leave without finding out if these two women's memories, thoughts and sense of self were merely parked somewhere, or destroyed forever.

He couldn't stand the sight of the orderly's mutilated hand; it put him in mind of a ghost train holo he took Joanna to as a kid. She screamed enough to bust his eardrums. Why is it that the scream of a ten-year-old girl is the loudest sound on the planet? Instead of looking at the freak show, he bandaged it, handling the white bone stumps like glass. Perhaps the guy was poor, looking for any job; not a low-down type. Among all this obscenity, he wanted to believe that.

They gagged and bound him, and propped his bulk up against a wall opposite a utilitarian chair, where McCoy sat. A flutter of eyelids meant their captive was waking. For a second he looked just like he'd woken in a feather bed at the Ritz then, as his eyesight and memory began to clear, he thrashed; a hog, tied.

"Wouldn't do that if I was you, likely to give yourself an injury. You don't want to upset my associate here." The statue that was Spock stood upright to the side of the doctor's chair, hands clasped behind his back, but the side of his mouth twitched, a tiny gesture that was all Spock. McCoy always thought the hands behind back stance was menacing, not calm. A man who in extreme danger doesn't even ready his stance? A fool would think him unprepared, and they would remember that thought later, as they rubbed their aching neck, having lost several hours.

Dirty and underhand as it was, he took his own phaser from his waistband. It looked the same as Charlie's, how was the sap to know? A pained whimper reverberated around the hard medical surfaces of the ward. Not making eye contact with the punk, McCoy stroked the phaser and looked over the guy's shoulder to the wall, then put on his discarded hat. "I got a name you know, wanna hear it?"

A noise that could have been yes or no echoed about the room.

"They call me _The Priest. _You know why? Nope? You don't? Hell, I'll tell ya anyway." Bones clipped the phaser to the waistband of his suit trousers, lowered his head and clasped his hands over his lap, quiet as if in prayer. After a few meditative breaths his head rose, lifted by slow puppet-strings, and he glared at their captive from beneath the rim of the Fedora.

"Every soul who comes to me?" McCoy stood, bent over in front of the orderly, and placed his splayed hand on the crown of the man's head in a benediction. "By sunrise, they've confessed their sins."

McCoy stretched, brought a wrist in front of his face and regarded his watch, his speech deliberate. "And sunrise is only a few hours away, my son."

Tonight he was angry enough to be, not just inhabit, the part he often played. "My Vulcan friend here, well, he'll remove your gag. If you scream, or make any move we're not happy with, I can trim your body-parts to my heart's content. Matter of fact, my weapon can be calibrated to disintegrate muscle, but not blood vessels. You can watch your blood goin' around in your veins. Of course, without musculature to support them, the view will only last a few seconds." For effect, he revealed the phaser once more, pushing the flap of his jacket away from his thigh.

With a flick of Spock's wrist, the gag was off. Caught in the Vulcan's blank stare, the orderly pissed his pants. A shallow pool of liquid blossomed on the hard floor. This was good; McCoy hoped this meant he was just naive, dragged into this racket by poverty and unemployment.

"These two dames," he jerked his head to the beds, "are their wiped minds still here? Can you restore them?"

A stuttering nod was the answer.

"What about the others? The other fifteen? We know all about them." It was a gamble, but this guy didn't look like he was the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Nothing, the sap stayed quiet. McCoy aimed the phaser just south of the man's foot, and fired. On stun, it didn't even melt the floor covering, but the reaction was swift. The orderly squealed and drew his knees up to his chest. A trickle of sweat made its way down the side of his flushed face.

"Redistributed, their minds replaced."

"What in hell does redistributed mean?" Bones leaned close to the man's face, baring his teeth.

"Put back – b-back in society with a different identity."

"What? Why?" If this wasn't the darned strangest thing McCoy ever heard.

With his eyes trained on the phaser, the orderly started singing like a canary, "P-protection racket, kinda."

"Excuse me? You yanking my chain, boy?"

"Are you the police? What's g-gonna happen to me?"

"Nope, I'm a PI. Got a few clients, friends of the disappeared. Uniforms aren't making much headway, got friends there too." McCoy removed the phaser from his waistband and placed it in his lap. "Now if you're a good boy and tell us what we want to know, we'll put a good word in for you with NGPD. Now spill, tell us all about this protection racket."

He shook, sweaty and rumpled like an old sheet, and the bright lights of the ward gave his face a blue-grey cast. Between each slothful sentence he wheezed in an ailing breath, McCoy guessed his bulk wasn't up to the stress of the situation. "KhanCorp was offering special clients a deal. Move their consciousness to a low-maintenance, slow-ageing new shell. They got a brand new bio-body at knock-down prices. Some in Khan's inner circle thought it was like a gift, for being good customers, ya know? Instead of putting them in a new body, we kidnapped lookalikes, re-tooled their DNA, and gave them surgery to look like a better or younger version of the client, whatever they wanted."

The orderly raised the side of his mouth in a sneer, shaking his head. "Who'd think they could get a bio-body for that dough, huh? You flatter these celebrities or wannabes, whatever, and they believe any old crap. Anything to get in with the politicians. The rich, famous and vain sure love politics."

With the roll of a fat baby in a wet diaper, the man shifted position, still wheezing; "Then, Khan calls the client and asks for protection money. He don't say it like that of course, more like 'a donation for my political campaign.' Makes out like there's been some kinda leak in security, that someone knows about their bio-body. If they give to his party, he'll protect their ass, make sure they don't get arrested."

It was a tale as tall as JT's building, but this dope looked like he couldn't spin one, so it was likely true. McCoy still couldn't fill in the blanks. "So, you're saying there's a bunch of beings out there who think they've been transferred into a new illegal bio-body, but they are just in some poor kidnapped bastard's _real_ body?"

"Yeah, they'll believe it, 'till their ass starts to go south, or they get some disease. They think they're immune to STDs, ha!"

"So why didn't you just put the clients under, operate to make them look younger and pretend they'd been put into a new bio-body?"

Their captive hacked out a laugh. "Tried that once, client wanted to know where his old body was and cottoned on to the racket. A smart customer wants to see the old parts that get replaced when a mechanic works on his vehicle, don't he?"

"What happened to him? The guy who rumbled you?"

"We wiped the last weeks of his memory, planted a few fake stories in the _Enquirer_ about a dope habit, roughed him up some and pumped him full of RiDi. Police found him 'tired and emotional' in a private suite in the Orion Fetish Club on Renfield. He didn't know if it was New York or New Year. Khan paid for his rehab – he thinks the sun shines out of the boss' ass now. He don't remember nothin' about any bio-body."

Could this really be true? McCoy was sure Khan was rich as Croesus. This wasn't the full reveal, not by a country mile. "Seems a bit elaborate just to get campaign donations. Doesn't seem like Khan would be that desperate."

A high-pitched choo-choo whistle of a laugh preceded the answer, and McCoy's fingers twitched in an urge to de-rail it with his phaser. "Khan don't care about _donations_. He's weedin' out the faithful, those that are calm are noted in his little black book, the ones that panic, well they get put in another column. It's a kinda psychological experiment, see how they hold under pressure."

Still, the whole thing was odd, you had to be a serious sociopath to go to these lengths. "Good Gorn man, there must be more to it than this, you don't just kidnap folks off the street and wipe their minds for an experiment."

The stool pigeon shrugged his round, sloping shoulders. "He hates crawlers, and he likes to pull the legs off bugs. He's bored, he's doin' it for _fun_. He does it, because he can_._"

Ants crawled over his skin, and Bones rubbed the back of his neck. He was sweating, and groped about in the background anxieties of his mind to find out why. "Why're you so talky about this?"

"I wanted to make it so the self-destruct you activated when you disconnected your guy over there got time to work. When the women's minds are restored, that'll finish it, you got nothin'." A sinister clown's smile spread on the man's face.

McCoy was sick to his stomach. He'd made an error. Would Jim have made a tactical screw-up like this? He didn't have time to think about it, and it took all he had not to smash a clenched fist into the clown's face; the sound of splintering bone would have been a welcome release-valve. Instead, he nodded to Spock.

"I've heard enough, put his gag back on, we gotta move it."

Spock dragged the orderly through to the other side of the glass wall, leaving a damp streak on the floor, sat him upright, then moved to the console and punched controls at warp speed. "The worker is correct in his assessment; there is nothing on this system except two large data files, primed for biological transfer. They appear to consist of human thought patterns and memories. I am unable to duplicate them, and if we return these minds, this entire system will be a husk also, barren of information, merely a data-free operating system. It is a particularly nasty trap."

"Are you saying we've got no choice? We can't keep a copy of the files for proof?" Never in his life would he ever make a pig's ear like this again.

It was as if Spock read his mind. "Mister Priest, I could see nothing to indicate that the medical monitoring equipment was connected to their main computer's data files. If there is fault, it is mine. I am, after all, New Glasgow's top computer expert."

Furious with himself, McCoy's voice was curt and he heard his accent thicken. "I'll ignore that self-assessment of your talents, but I appreciate the sentiment. What now?"

"I need codes to progress this operation. I would rather we obtained them in the conventional manner."

Behind the console slumped the geek who'd suffered at the Vulcan's neck-pinch. The guy had a face like a slice of salami, red and mottled. Stringy, greasy hair hung over his ears and Bones wondered why a boy who worked for a cosmetic surgery company was allowed to look that way. Not front of the house, he supposed. Rummaging through the untidy office, McCoy found an unused cable and bound the computer operator's ankles to his chair. From his suit pocket, he drew a glinting hypo and plunged it into the boy's jugular with force, then kicked the chair over on its wheels, so the geek became a beetle on his back.

Stroking the hypo, he stood over the computer operator, whose eyeballs flicked behind his eyelids as he awoke, and when the lids rose, McCoy spoke with languid sleaze. "I like them tied. I like a submissive with their ankles bound. It allows for easier penetration. He stroked the hypo some more as the small undernourished scrote lay on the floor shouting obscenities.

"You fucker, what the fuck is going on here? I'm not just some fucking drone who knows nothing. I got qualifications. Five years at KhanCorp, my boss will bend you over and screw you right in the ass."

"That right? He'll have to step over you to get to me."

"Fuck you!" He spat at the doctor's boots.

"You don't wanna do that son, I'm real particular 'bout my boots. That, my boy, was a mistake, but thanks for the DNA sample. Collecting them's a hobby of mine." Spock grabbed the man's arms and McCoy knelt, touching the hypo to the operator's neck again, using it to trace the line of the vein. "And, for the record? I don't much care for your language, shows a lack of imagination."

McCoy never wore shoes, shoes were for patsies. His boots were old, ten years old, and soft through wear, their uppers polished to a patent-black. Each night as he unlaced his support, he gave thanks to the unknown cobbler. Without his feet, what was a detective? A nobody, that's what. Like all of his kind, instead of an Italian leather sole, his boots were rubber-soled. He could gum-shoe around a crime. After he gave up this game, his dream was to get a pair of real leather-soled boots. A sole that hit the pavement with staccato purpose; a sole he could strike a match on. A sole that needed replaced, taken to a shoemaker; a sole that gave someone steady work.

The doctor took the phaser from his suit, and spoke to the sleaze-bag, real quiet. "Give us the codes to put these women's minds back or I will shove my phaser up your asshole, put it on 'slow cook' and fry your innards from the inside out. Wanna be shitting into a bag for the rest of your life for the minimum wage that suppurating boil Khan gives you? 'Coz on your wages you can't afford the re-constructive surgery. It's a sick world here boy, where essential, life-threatening surgery costs a hundred times as much as cosmetic falderals. Do it now or I will maim you where you lie. But not before I get my Vulcan associate to hack into your head."

McCoy dropped lower and put his lips to the operator's ear, so only the two of them could hear his whispered words.

"He can enter your thoughts like a man crushing the soft pulp of a ripe Georgia peach to get to the kernel. He doesn't like to soil his mind, but he can just about tolerate it, if the rewards are sufficient. The needs of the many, and all that jazz."

McCoy pocketed the hypo and turned his attention to the phaser, talking at normal volume. "I came by a new toy today, it's enlightening. Made your friend here 'see the light'. Come on, let's ask him if he thinks you should cooperate with your priest." Panicked squealing came from behind the orderly's gag, accompanied by fierce head-nodding.

"See, he thinks you should. Or I could unwrap his bandages and show you my handiwork, if that would help you come to a decision." More squealing followed, and the injured man shook his head with violence.

"See? The wounds inflicted even make me sick, and I used to be a doctor. Makes me good at persuasion_._" Bones tipped Spock a nod, and the Vulcan lifted the greasy kid by his arms, righting him on the chair, and put one hand on the boy's shoulder, near to the neck-pinch nerve.

"The Vulcan here can sense your intentions. One false move and he'll knock you out, rummage about in your brain and find out how to fix these patients himself, in the process finding out all your darkest secrets and desires. If he's careless, tramples rather than tiptoes, I can't guess at your prognosis."

"That's against Vulcan ethics, he won't do it." Still defiant, the geek gritted his jaw.

"He's half-Vulcan, he's got leeway." Easy as shooting fish in a barrel, underworld scum believed any old lie; they judged everyone by their own standards.

With his face now purple and thunderous, the operator rattled out some numbers to the computer. McCoy and Spock watched as two progress bars crept along the display.

Transferring Cortical Storage to Bio-Unit client 023a, Human, Female, 23.4 Terran years.

Transferring Cortical Storage to Bio-Unit client 041, Orion, Female, 33.7 Terran years.

"How long will it take?" Spock's first words uttered to the operator caused his face to blanch, giving his mottled face even more of a salami-appearance.

"It's about four petabytes per CSU, so less than twenty minutes." McCoy detected a self-satisfied tone to the answer, that he knew something a Vulcan didn't. If McCoy wasn't the law he'd have been tempted to give the goon a phaser-whipping.

Twenty minutes to restore two women's lives? The doctor was impressed, and sickened. They waited in silence, watching the progress of the uploads. Sixteen minutes in, Spock yanked the operator and his chair back. "I would appreciate, sir, if you did not attempt to engage the emergency call below your console."

Bones' restraint was tissue-thin. "Better watch you don't accidentally fall over in that chair and do yourself a critical injury."

"You wouldn't dare!" The geek was all bravado.

"You're right, I didn't say it would be me. I leave all the messy stuff to the Police Department. They get off on a bit of casual brutality." Bones shook his head, fed up. "I've had it here. Let's leave this to the flatfoots."

McCoy flipped his communicator and summoned the NGPD.

~~intermission~~


	19. Chapter 19

**Nineteen: Light from a distant sun, will shower over everyone**

And I'm lying on the table washed out in a flood, like a Christian feeling vengeance from above. I don't pretend to know what you want, but I offer love.

_ Distant Sun, Crowded House_

_.  
><em>

It was both very late, and very early. The team (minus their engineer) sat on the comfy couches in the good office all, including the Vulcan and the teenager, cradling large glasses of bourbon. Chekov sat on an armchair with Porthos cradled in his lap, still sleeping off his surgery. Observing the motley crew, Uhura thought they looked like survivors of a shuttle crash. Even Spock was untidy, his tie loosened and his waistcoat unbuttoned. Christine's eyes were red-rimmed with fatigue and she sat close to Charlene who was already two whiskies down; she'd had Scotty's share.

Bones was low in his seat, iron filings of a beard dusting his chin. "Well, the two women are a police matter now, we reunited them with their wits, thanks to the help of an unfriendly computer operator and Charlie's downright illegal phaser. We'll have to tell SI and NGPD the phaser malfunctioned, if they ask."

Gazing into the bottom of his glass, Chekov was morose. "It is all gone, nothing, no proof, if it ever existed. Uhura and I have searched everything from the codes Mister Spock transferred to us."

"That's not quite true, Chekov. We still have the ghost records from the _TransForm_ clinic." Uhura leant over and touched Chekov's arm but he shook his head.

"It's tough luck, son. I should have known my disconnection of Scotty triggered some kinda fail-safe, a self-destruct. We were lucky it didn't wipe the cortical storage units," said McCoy, sinking further in his chair.

"Although," Spock swirled the liquid in his glass, holding it up to the light, "it is entirely possible that KhanCorp kept paper records."

"Well," McCoy slumped further, "if they did, someone will have put a match to them by now, and the DA will want us to prove we didn't fabricate the ghost records to pin a bum rap on Khan. Anyway, no matter how this turns out, I'm proud of you all, and I've put a slip in to Jim for a commendation for Porthos. Other animals get bravery awards, why not him? We saved two women's lives tonight, don't forget it." Looking older than his forty years, Bones wiped an eye. "Well, I don't know about anyone else, but I'm going to my bunk."

Chekov asked Charlie permission to take Porthos, and another bourbon, to bed with him and she granted it; he looked done in, poor kid. Christine said she'd leave her door unlocked for whatever Charlie decided so they said their good nights, leaving her alone in the office with Uhura and Spock, sensitive to her status as a spare part. Spock looked at Uhura with such intensity that it seemed easier to go up and face Scotty than to sit one more minute among the fog of tension, so she downed the remains of her drink and exited.

.

.

Outside her apartment door, she put her hand on the knob and stepped inside, fired up by the booze. It was sunrise, and for New Glasgow, a particularly bright one. On little cat feet, she crossed the sitting room and opened the liquor cabinet. A bottle of Arran fifty-year-old Scotch, matured in port barrels, sat pride of place. It was a gift to Scotty from a grateful client with a very expensive broken-down antique shuttle car, and the seal wasn't even cracked. She set it on the little table beside the couch, along with a glass. She would need it later.

In common with the whole team, she hated the climate on New Glasgow. It was the job, her friends and her lover that kept her going, and helped keep the secret off her shoulders a little. Now, the cat was out of the bag she wasn't sure where she stood with Scotty, and her dearest friendship, with Christine, was only just out of the ICU. Perhaps, after all, she had only her self to rely on.

In the kitchenette she rummaged for scissors, then moved to the small bathroom.

Standing at the mirror, she grasped her puff of hair and cut through it below the tie. Both the tie and the hair went in the trash.

Quick, deliberate snips cut the rest away, leaving her with the rough-shorn skull of a hustler street-urchin, then she picked up Scotty's keratin-trimmer and disintegrated what was left in slow, even strokes.

One good thing about the lack of sunlight on this dull planet was that her scalp and face were similar in tone. Before leaving the bathroom, she swept four bottles of hair product into the waste-basket to join the hair.

From now on, Charlene Masters would be taking the simple approach to life. She was what she was, and if people needed persuading, or educating, it was not her concern. As McCoy said, her new body was her parents' risk to take, and not her weight to bear. At seventeen, she'd begun to blend into the background with her boy's clothes, shoes and hats. No more; her masculine clothes would accentuate her femininity, not disguise it.

A year-old birthday gift from Scotty sat on the top of her jewellery box; pearl earrings the size of an old Euro coin, rarely worn. Until today, she'd thought them too extravagant, for special occasions only. Now she fitted them into her ears and fastened them with a snap, uncorked the Arran and poured herself two generous fingers. The morning sun shone lightly on her slight form, as she sat back in an armchair pulled up to the bed. Rays glanced off her amber glass and she sipped, savouring the sweet taste of liquid heat slipping down her throat.

.

.

Sunshine filtered through his half-closed lids; it was a novelty here all right. Scotty felt energised for a brief moment, until he realised where he was, and how he had got there. In the night, Christine left him in the recovery position, but now he was lying on his back, a sign he'd been able to move himself. He gave the toes of one foot a tentative wiggle and joy flooded his heart when his extremities obeyed him, followed by shame as he thought of the word _extremities_, and his interaction with the nurse. If he hadn't been such a dobber he wouldn't have got into the first mess, that got him into the second mess, that ended up with him here, alone in bed while Charlie slept downstairs.

Because of his master's petulance, Porthos had been abused, and would be the recipient of the best treats credits could buy. Moisture came to his eyes as he thought of his pet's devotion; Scotty could give him an old tennis ball inside a holey sock and he'd wag his tail in excitement like it was the best present in the whole wide world. A man could learn a lot from his dog. Blinking the tears away, he rolled over to look at the bedside clock, and got a hell of a shock to see Charlie in a chair by the bed, fast asleep with her hand round a glass of whisky. He leaned over and eased the glass from her grasp. She didn't stir; had she watched over him all night? No, she couldn't have, Christine and McCoy were there and he didn't see her then.

In the sunlight, her scalp glowed with the sheen of the pearls in her ears and he smiled; he'd always wondered what she would look like bald. It wasn't such a big leap since her usual tight hairstyle was so flat to her skull. Thick black eyelashes curled on her cheeks and Scotty felt his eyes sting yet again; she was so perfect he wondered if he was dreaming, and propped himself up on an elbow just to watch her for a bit. As he sipped the whisky – Gorn, whatever it was, it was good stuff – his stomach became lead. All he had was "sorry", and perhaps it wouldn't be enough.

Scotty set the glass on the bedside table and sat up.

"Gah!" He'd forgotten about Christine's Sanitary Assistance Device. A burning spike caused his bladder to contract and he buried his fists in his eye sockets, trying not to say the worst words he could think of, more from humiliation than pain. Surgical glue nipped the delicate skin on a part of his anatomy he never again wanted to name in the same sentence as 'surgical glue'.

"Scotty, what's wrong?" Charlene must have been wakened by his squawk, and he felt her small fingers close around his wrists to prise his hands away.

He stammered, finding his voice once more, after many hours, "I-I love you, and you look beautiful." Slim arms went about his neck and he felt the new sensation of her bald head against his cheek.

"You great Scottish eejit, you didn't hear my big speech, and I had one all prepared."

"'Sorry, 's all right, don't talk," he buried his nose in her shoulder, euphoric at the familiar smell of her perfume, amazed it could be such a tangible thing.

"Don't talk."

~~intermission~~

**Scotty-isms**

dobber - dick


	20. Chapter 20

**Twenty: The looking glass, so shiny and new**

"Crimson Crest is on the funny farm, had to be taken away by the men in white coats!" Mudd was gleeful on the end of Uhura's communicator. "She's in a padded room, gibbering like a Ferengi caught with his hand in the register, the dear unfortunate."

"Harcourt Fenton Mudd. That's not very sympathetic." Uhura wasn't convinced his attachment to her was a good thing, but it was helpful.

"Oh my dear deluded girl, the first person who says they don't have a prurient interest is a liar. Funny how I can never_ find_ anyone who reads the _Herald Enquirer_ and yet, mysteriously, its sales figures tell me that almost half the population of New Glasgow subscribes to its site."

"What do they say is wrong with Crimson, Mister Mudd?"

"The poor thing thinks she is not residing in her own body! They've tested her against her DNA records and she most certainly is. I blame this quest for fame. It has sent the tragic girl quite mad: '_Oh h__eavens__, __is't possible a young maid's wits___, s___hould be as mortal as an old man's life__?' _ I hope to get an exclusive interview with her."

"Hamlet, Harry? _'Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.'_ Perhaps, like Ophelia, Crimson has been driven to the brink by the treatment of others."

"You my dear, are altogether too, too sentimental."

* * *

><p>In her head, her voice sounded high; the dampening effects of her skull did not conspire to bring it down an octave or two.<p>

She hardly remembered having a voice at all; she'd learned to speak with her hands. Having, all of a sudden, vibrations and reverberations in your head that weren't there before, was terrifying; they sounded like a construction worker's drill. She used her hands in a dance, her expression entirely through them, until the psychologist came to her and told her to stop, to try to use her voice. Instead of her beautiful, elegant, manicured hands she used this weird, croaking, untuned violin of a voice, coming from a mouth she ate, kissed and smiled with.

How could these vulgar, jarring noises come from the lips that savoured the brine of Dublin Bay prawns, and the heat, spice and prickle of Cardassian fire ants? A friend from Terra once made fried Orion star-fruit with chili flakes, lime and butter, and she could taste the familiar and unfamiliar flavours yet. On her tongue, she devoured the tingle, temperature and taste of all those who sought comfort with her, the hot-penny flesh of Vulcans, the salt-iron of humans, and the zest of her fellow Orions.

By her own choice she wore the collar, funny how it made her sound like a priest, and indeed, many did kneel before her to confess, but she was free. Much as a woman who wished to deflect unwanted suitors wore a fake wedding ring, her collar was her shield and protection.

Ungrateful, that's what she felt. Her voice, if this screeching could be called that, was restored and yet she wished it taken from her again. Without a voice, people listened, taking time to allow her to sign, or write. Now she was one voice in a cacophony, talked over in the rush by those eager to hear only their own voices.

Only one man understood. He returned her life to her, and she asked him to take back her voice. It was less drastic, what he did. He blocked a vital neural pathway. He could unblock the path, if she wished it; she would never wish it. It would be restored over her cold, dead hands.

* * *

><p>One woman was devastated, one delighted. Starfleet psychiatrists were on standby to welcome Mandy Anders (for that was her name) back to the land of the living with her new body. Instead of terror, they found joy, instead of horror, happiness, and the pronouncement that she'd "got a million credits worth of kick-ass surgery for free!"<p>

"Gorn, I thought I'd found a good 'un in that bar, so when he offered me a 'pick-you-up', I reckoned it was some kinda upper. Then I woke up like this! I'm so darned beautiful, I could jest cry." Her moist, full lips trembled at her good fortune.

Felicity Angel wasn't so happy. Sadly for Angel, her doppelgänger turned to a professional lookalike agency and was earning thousands of credits as a 'retro'; a ten-years-younger reminder of her fading looks. But Angel was rich enough to stop acting, and so she started up two new political lobbying organisations; the Body Copyright Association, and the Natural Body Foundation, there being none so righteous as the converted. Of course, when questioned by the police, she knew nothing, and the cost of her lawyer allowed her to evade a lie detector test, due to her state of extreme trauma.

Crimson Crest was not so lucky. She sits yet in a psychiatric facility, completely sane, but unheeded. Gaila and Jim visit as much as they can; their guilt cannot allow them to do otherwise. McCoy visits every few weeks and tells her he is fighting to get proof. The guards taunt her, tell her the detective is playing along with her depersonalisation disorder.

And the one thing that truly belongs to Crimson – her mind – they tell her it has been lost.

~~intermission~~


	21. Chapter 21

****Closing credits, in which Chekov gets the last word, and wonders if there is more than one way to skin a rabbit.

* * *

><p><strong>Closing credits: Never send a man to do a boy's job<strong>

It was early, red fingers of dawn still felt their way through the clouds and Christine expected to be the first person in the office, but she was wrong. There at his desk sat the Kid, hair on end, tie slack, and with an illegal number of empty coffee cups strewn about. It begged a question, "What are you up to, Chekov?"

"I have hacked into the New Glasgow IRS system." The heels of his palms went to his eyes and rubbed hard, he looked about twelve years old, going on fifty.

"Yeah? Trying to dodge your taxes, Kid?" Without thinking, Christine smoothed down his hair and he batted her hand away.

"I wish to, but no. It is very enlightening, that is all."

"What is? What's enlightening?" Christine flicked – distracted – through the messages on her Padd, until Chekov's silence caused her to look up at him in query.

The Kid was as wily as she'd ever seen him. With a vulpine grin spreading over his features, he leaned back on the legs of his chair and loosened his tie some more. "Looking through Mayor Khan's tax returns. He owns such big companies, but his tax bill is very low. Now _that_ is enlightening."

**~~ The End ~~**

A/N: Thank you my loyal band of readers. There is a McChapel out-take coming in about 10 days that never made it into the story. Look out for it if you are a McChapel fan, it is called _A close shave._

Chapel and Priest: All Star Trek characters © Paramount. I do not profit from these words.

Limited Copyright, Spockchick 2011. Please do not reproduce or distribute without the author's permission. The characters of Crimson Crest and Hawkins © Spockchick.


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